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
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
So philosophers so throughly comprehend us as horses.
Genius is full of trash.
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.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
In glades they meet skull after skull Where pine cones lay-the rusted gun, Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat And cuddled up skeleton; And scores of such. Some start as in dreams, And comrades lost bemoan; By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged- But the year and the Man were gone.
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?
I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself
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.