Herman Melville Quotes

“A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.”

“I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.”

“It's better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”

“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.”

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”

“Call me Ishmael.”

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”

“I try all things, I achieve what I can.”

“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”

“A gentle sister is the second best gift to a man.”

“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; – nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

“This whole world is a preposterous one, with many preposterous people in it.”