Herman Melville Quotes

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas.

Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

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

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

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.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.