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
A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.
We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?
The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.
The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
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.
Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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.)
Queegqueg no care what god made him shark ... wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god what made him shark must be one dam Ingin.
Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after.
Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits... they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew.
all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.