Quotes from Herman Melville
The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
- Herman Melville
...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.
- Herman Melville
The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
- Herman Melville
For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.
- Herman Melville
So long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.
- Herman Melville
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
- Herman Melville
Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
- Herman Melville
The most mighty of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
- Herman Melville
Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
- Herman Melville
All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
- Herman Melville
It is against the will of God that the East should be Christianized.
- Herman Melville
But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!
- Herman Melville