Quote

A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

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
Truth
Still
May
Sometimes
Thing
Incredible
True
Stills

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
Herman Melville
Image
Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
Herman Melville
Image
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
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Failure is the test of greatness.
Herman Melville
Image
If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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
O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.
Herman Melville
Image
All truth is profound.
Herman Melville
Image
beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
Herman Melville
Image
Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
Image
One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
Herman Melville
Image
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
Herman Melville
Image
To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
Herman Melville
Image
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
Herman Melville
Image
At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
Herman Melville
Image
Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
Herman Melville
Image
Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
Herman Melville
Image
Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
Herman Melville
Image
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Herman Melville