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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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.
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.