Quote

Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

Herman Melville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Makes
Daring
Oftenest
Men
Round
Seamen
Rounds
Braver
Thus
Cape
Brave
Capes
Danger
Horn
Goes
Horns
Less
Familiarity

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville
Image
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
Herman Melville
Image
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville
Image
To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
Herman Melville
Image
Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
Herman Melville
Image
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
Herman Melville
Image
No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
Herman Melville
Image
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
Herman Melville
Image
Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
Herman Melville
Image
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
Herman Melville
Image
There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
Herman Melville
Image
A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
Image
Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
Herman Melville
Image
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
Herman Melville
Image
We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
Herman Melville
Image
Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
Herman Melville
Image
The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
Herman Melville
Image
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
Herman Melville