Herman Melville Quotes About Literature
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At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
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There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.
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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.
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The further our civilization advances upon its present lines so much the cheaper sort of thing does "fame" become, especially of the literary sort. This species of "fame" a waggish acquaintance says can be manufactured to order, and sometimes is so manufactured.
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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.
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Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.
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Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.
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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.
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Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Art is the objectification of feeling.
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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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.
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There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
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It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.
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Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
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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.
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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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