Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. - Herman Melville
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang. - Herman Melville
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shores our bed and eats at our own table. - Herman Melville
I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. - Herman Melville
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. - Herman Melville
Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own. - Herman Melville
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world. - Herman Melville
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. - Herman Melville
Were this world an endless pain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. - Herman Melville
He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man can not be great. - Herman Melville
For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. - Herman Melville
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
From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. - Herman Melville
Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity. - Herman Melville
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
I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! - Herman Melville
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. - Herman Melville
Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. - Herman Melville
Toward the accomplishment of an aim, which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement, sagacious and sound. These men are madmen, and of the most dangerous sort. - Herman Melville
War yet shall be, but warriors are now operatives; war's made less grand than peace. - Herman Melville
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. - Herman Melville
Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor - Herman Melville
He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man. - Herman Melville
If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. - Herman Melville
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. - Herman Melville
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. - Herman Melville
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed. - Herman Melville
one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duelist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. - Herman Melville
Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? … Yet it is bright with many a gem; I, the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzling confounds. ’Tis Iron – that I know – not gold. - Herman Melville
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. - Herman Melville