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.
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
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 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 no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
Herman Melville
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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
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
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
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
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
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
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
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
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
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.
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
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
Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
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
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
Herman Melville
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
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
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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