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
Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?
Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
True places are not found on maps.
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores;let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come.