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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.

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
Without
Sire
Much
Claim
Like
Claims
World
Unless
Nation
Nations
Father
Mother

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We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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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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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
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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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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
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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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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
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In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.
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Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.
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