Quotes from Herman Melville

As his former ship moves off, Budd shouts, Good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man.

Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.

It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Only the man who says no is free

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?