Herman Melville quotes - page 4

But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair, I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist. (Herman Melville)
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
Herman Melville
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
Herman Melville
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
Herman Melville
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Herman Melville
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
Art is the objectification of feeling.
Herman Melville
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Herman Melville
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.
Herman Melville
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth. (Herman Melville)
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
Herman Melville
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
Herman Melville
An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Herman Melville
They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. The dignity is in leisure.
Herman Melville
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville
Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
Herman Melville
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Herman Melville
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Herman Melville
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. (Herman Melville)
From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space.
Herman Melville
Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
Herman Melville
The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.
Herman Melville
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville