A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
Herman Melville

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Herman Melville

Art is the objectification of feeling.
Herman Melville

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
Herman Melville

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Herman Melville

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Herman Melville

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
Herman Melville

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
Herman Melville

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
Herman Melville


He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
Herman Melville

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

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
Herman Melville

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
Herman Melville

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
Herman Melville

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
Herman Melville

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville

It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Herman Melville

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