As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand! — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads,… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course by a blast re sistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices… The prejudiced against color finds several… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy-start her, all; but keep cool, keep… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with… — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.” — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“(On Ralph Waldo Emerson)I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now -but of the whole… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the… — Herman Melville Copy Share
“Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this… — Herman Melville Copy Share
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land. — Herman Melville Copy Share Image
“Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when-There she blows!-the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to… — Herman Melville Copy Share
