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

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
Herman Melville

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Herman Melville

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Herman Melville

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.
Herman Melville

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
Herman Melville

There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.
Herman Melville

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
Herman Melville

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
Herman Melville

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

There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.
Herman Melville

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

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.
Herman Melville

There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
Herman Melville

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.
Herman Melville

There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
Herman Melville

To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville