Quotes from Herman Melville

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

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.

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.

A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

The terrors of truth and dart of death To faith alike are vain.

Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.