Guess quote

Herman Melville [1819-1891] American

Rank: 101
Poet (with poems)

Dark romanticism, Philosophy

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick.

Truth, Art, Age, Death, Friendship, Future, Hope, Love, Men, Respect, Smile, Strength, Travel, Wisdom, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.		101
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.	Men	102
Art is the objectification of feeling.	Art	103
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.	Smile	104
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.	Friendship, Love, Truth	105
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.		106
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.	Truth	107
It is not down in any map; true places never are.		108
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.		109
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.	Work	110
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.		111
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.		112
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.		113
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.	Art, Wisdom	114
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.		115
Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.		116
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.	Hope	117
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.		118
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.		119
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.		120
There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.		121
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.		122
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	123
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.		124
I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.		125
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.	Future	126
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.	Age, Death	201
Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.		202
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.	Strength	203
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.		204
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.		205
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.		206
At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.	Respect	207
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.	Travel	208
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.		209
There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.		210
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.		211
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.		212
Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.		213
Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?		214
Truth is in things, and not in words.		215
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.		216
There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep.		217
There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.		218
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.		219
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.		220
There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.		221
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?		222
Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?		223
There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.		224
The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.		225

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