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Herman Melville Quotes (164 quotes)
 | Source/Notes: Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850) |
| “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Ahab to Starbuck, in Ch. 36 : The Quarter-Deck - Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851) |
| “The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851) |
| “Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bk. III, ch. 1 - Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) |
| “But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bk. V, ch. 7 - Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) |
| “All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bk. XIV, ch. 1 - Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) |
| “His was the scorn which thinks it not worth the while to be scornful. Those he most scorned, never knew it.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bk. XXV, ch. 3 - Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) |
| “Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bk. XXV, ch. 4 - Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) |
| “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable, was his mildly cadaverous reply.” ―Herman Melville Source/Notes: Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) |
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Herman Melville
Born: August 1, 1819
Died: September 28, 1891 (aged 72)
Nationality: American
Occupation: Novelist, teacher, sailor, lecturer, poet
Bio: Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His first three books gained much contemporary attention, and after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten.
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“We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder clean; puts out our fires, And introduces hunger, frost and woe, Where peace and hospitality might reign. Dress changes the manners.”
—
Voltaire
