Quote

But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.

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
Natural
Seeming
Partake
Often
Vitality
Greens
Without
Manifestation
Exuberance
Heart
Frank
Manifestations
Crookedness
Long
Vices
Accordance
Viciousness
Called
Sailor
Fiddlers
Law
Proceed
Constraint
Less
Constraints
Sailors

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At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.
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There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.
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...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.
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Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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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.
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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate-- Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
Herman Melville
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
Herman Melville