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That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.

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
Mortals
Sorrow
Joy
True
Cannot
Ecclesiastes
Men
Undeveloped
Mortal
Hath

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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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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
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Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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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.
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
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Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
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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.
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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.
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Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
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