Quote

What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred Saturnians through life's Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

Herman Melville

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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Life
Mouths
Bred
Thus
Bloody
South
Troops
Boys
North
Went
Generous
Came
Mouth
Lying
Golden
Happiness
Bed
Midway

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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
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Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.
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How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.
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But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.
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Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
Herman Melville