Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
Herman Melville
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Vulgar
Virtues
Courage
Virtue
Common
More quotes by Herman Melville
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
Herman Melville
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
Herman Melville
For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
Herman Melville
Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
Herman Melville
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Herman Melville
Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
Herman Melville
It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
Herman Melville
He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
Herman Melville
Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
Herman Melville
It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
Herman Melville
Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
Herman Melville
You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
Herman Melville
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
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
Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
Herman Melville
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.
Herman Melville
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
Herman Melville
Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
Herman Melville
