Quotes from Herman Melville

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.

Will you, or will you not, quit me?' I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. 'I would prefer not to quit you', he replied, gently emphasizing the not.

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.

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority.

Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.

Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp - all others but liars!

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.

Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.

an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.