Quote

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

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
Cannot
Blindly
Even
Inflict
Would
Evils
Officers
Remove
Worst
Upon
Evil

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
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
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
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Herman Melville
Image
There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
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
Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
Herman Melville
Image
The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
Herman Melville
Image
Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
Herman Melville
Image
All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
Herman Melville
Image
We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Herman Melville
Image
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
Herman Melville
Image
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
Herman Melville
Image
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
Herman Melville
Image
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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
Image
Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
Herman Melville
Image
Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
Herman Melville