Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melvillewas an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period best known for Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick. His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 August 1819
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges...
Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.
In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt--a wind to freeze; Sad patience--joyous energies; Humility--yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity--reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel--Art.
People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions.
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
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.
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.
The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.