Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herman Melville

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

Herman Melville

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

Herman Melville

Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Herman Melville

Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

Herman Melville

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

How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.

Herman Melville

The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?).

Herman Melville

Nothing can lift the heart of man like manhood in a fellow man.

Herman Melville

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

Youth is the time when hearts are large.

Herman Melville

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

Herman Melville

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.

Herb Kelleher

The essential difference in service is not machines or 'things.' The essential difference is minds, hearts, spirits, and souls.

Henry David Thoreau

Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.

Henry David Thoreau

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.

Henry David Thoreau

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

Henry David Thoreau

The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.

Henry David Thoreau

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Henry David Thoreau

I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of the rich.

H. L. Mencken

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Jean Genet

My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whence do I get my rules of conduct? I find them in my heart. Whatever I feel to be good is good. Whatever I feel to be evil is evil. Conscience is the best of casuists.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Trust your heart rather than your head.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.