Quotes from Herman Melville

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.

to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

Failure is the test of greatness.

Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.

If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.