Quote

If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.

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
Well
Gratification
Thing
Prayers
Men
Pray
Praying
Youth
Prayer
Wells
Might
Responsive

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
...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.
Herman Melville
Image
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville
Image
It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
Herman Melville
Image
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Herman Melville
Image
Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
Image
The easiest way of life is the best.
Herman Melville
Image
Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Herman Melville
Image
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
Image
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
Herman Melville
Image
As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman Melville
Image
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Herman Melville
Image
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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
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
We die of too much life.
Herman Melville
Image
All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
Herman Melville
Image
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
Herman Melville
Image
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville
Image
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
Image
There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville