Herman Melville Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“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.”

“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.”

“Art is the objectification of feeling.”

“He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.”

“It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.”

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

“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.”

“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.”

“At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.”

“They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.”