Quote

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

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
Learn
Glare
Thing
Englishman
Every
Glitter
Englishmen
Domestic
Indispensable
Sensible
Opulence
American
Decor

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
Herman Melville
Image
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
Herman Melville
Image
In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
Herman Melville
Image
Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
Herman Melville
Image
As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
Herman Melville
Image
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
Herman Melville
Image
Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
Herman Melville
Image
To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
Herman Melville
Image
Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
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
Image
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
Herman Melville
Image
Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?
Herman Melville
Image
Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
Herman Melville
Image
Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
Herman Melville
Image
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
Herman Melville
Image
My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
Image
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
Herman Melville
Image
Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
Herman Melville
Image
Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
Herman Melville
Image
Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville