Quote

Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.

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
Though
Ill
Suffering
Gods
Doe
Believer
Things
Goodness
Men
Gratitude
Omniscient
Love
Sweet
Oblivious
Full
Idiotic
Knowing
Believers

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
Herman Melville
Image
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
Herman Melville
Image
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
Image
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.
Herman Melville
Image
beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
Herman Melville
Image
I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
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
I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
Herman Melville
Image
Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Herman Melville
Image
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville
Image
Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
Herman Melville
Image
Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
Herman Melville
Image
...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Herman Melville
Image
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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
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
A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
Image
...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
Image
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
Herman Melville
Image
I would prefer not to.
Herman Melville