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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

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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
Childhood
Prowling
Middle
Bandits
Age
Stirred
Death
Boldly
Way
Pursued
Men
Grown
Like
Leads
Ushers
Road
Bandit

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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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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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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?
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Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
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Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
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All truth is profound.
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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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