Quote

Failure is the test of greatness.

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
Test
Tests
Greatness
Failure

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.
Herman Melville
Image
There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
Herman Melville
Image
Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Herman Melville
Image
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville
Image
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
Herman Melville
Image
For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
Herman Melville
Image
But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
Herman Melville
Image
Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
Herman Melville
Image
for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Herman Melville
Image
Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
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
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
Herman Melville
Image
Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?
Herman Melville
Image
For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who believe and tremble has one.
Herman Melville
Image
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
Image
He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.
Herman Melville
Image
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville