86 Herman Melville Quotes From The Iconic 'Moby Dick' Writer

Herman Melville is one of the most celebrated writers of the American Renaissance period.

He has graced the world of literature with his iconic works including novels, short stories and poems which have been held in high regard amongst lovers of this subject.

He was famously known for his adventure novel 'Moby Dick' which has been deemed as one of the most wonderful books ever written. Here is a list of Herman Melville quotes that will make you want to sail to the sea for an adventure of a lifetime.

If you like our content, you can check out other amazing articles like 'Moby Dick' quotes and Walt Whitman quotes.
 

Herman Melville 'Moby Dick' Quotes

You will simply love this list of 'Moby Dick' quotes by the novelist that will inspire you to set sail on an adventure at sea. Quotes like "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" really stand out.

1. "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

2. "I try all things, I achieve what I can."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

3. "Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

4. "This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!"

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

5. "Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

6. "For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

7. "While ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

8. "Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

9. "Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

10. "Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

11. "In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

12. "See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

13. "Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

14. "I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

15. "For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

16. "But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm..."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

17. "Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

18. "Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

19. "Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

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

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

21. "Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

22. "Ignorance is the parent of fear."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

23. "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."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

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

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

25. "Human madness is often times a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

26. "Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

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

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

28. "Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

29. "Call me Ishmael."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

30. "Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?"

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

31. "So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

32. "A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

33. "Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

34. "Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

35. "Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

36. "All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

37. "The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

38. "If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

39. "It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

40. "Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance."

-Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'.

Famous Quotes By Herman Melville

Herman Melville is one of the most famous classic adventure writers and novelist. Here is a list of some famous quotes Herman Melville has included in his works and saying from his life. The novelist has written quite a few great books during his life, so check out the list of quotes below.

41. "A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things."

-Herman Melville.

42. "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

-Herman Melville.

43. "Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?"

-Herman Melville, 'Billy Budd, Sailor'.

44. "Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its jagged edges."

-Herman Melville, 'Billy Budd, Sailor'.

45. "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."

-Herman Melville.

46. "I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best."

-Herman Melville, 'Bartleby, The Scrivener'.

47. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."

-Herman Melville.

48. "Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows."

-Herman Melville.

49. "When a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him...then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him."

-Herman Melville.

50. "Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blindingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity."

-Herman Melville, 'Billy Budd, Sailor'.

51. "The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free."

-Herman Melville, 'White-Jacket'.

52. "A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities."

-Herman Melville.

53. "Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed."

-Herman Melville.

54. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

-Herman Melville.

55. "Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none."

-Herman Melville, 'Bartleby, The Scrivener'.

56. "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."

-Herman Melville.

57. "I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy."

-Herman Melville.

58. "Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters."

-Herman Melville.

59. "Ah, Humanity."

-Herman Melville.

60. "I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also."

-Herman Melville.

61. "Truth is in things, and not in words."

-Herman Melville.

62. "Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound."

-Herman Melville.

63. "To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain."

-Herman Melville, 'Bartleby, The Scrivener'.

64. "Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing."

-Herman Melville.

65. "A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

-Herman Melville.

66. "Genius is full of trash."

-Herman Melville.

67. "It is not down on any map; true places never are."

-Herman Melville.

68. "Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."

-Herman Melville.

70. "In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans."

-Herman Melville.

The Best Quotes By American Novelist Herman Melville

If you are looking for some of the best quotes by American novelist Herman Melville that have blessed literature. This list of quotes will satiate the bookworm in you.

71. "I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself."

-Herman Melville.

72. "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; 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."

-Herman Melville.

73. "To be hated cordially is only a left-handed compliment."

-Herman Melville.

74. "All mortal greatness is but disease."

-Herman Melville.

75. "We cannibals must help these Christians."

-Herman Melville.

76. "Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts."

-Herman Melville.

77. "I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar."

-Herman Melville.

78. "Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe."

-Herman Melville.

79. "For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it."

-Herman Melville.

80. "Doesn't the devil live forever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any person wearing mourning for the devil?"

-Herman Melville.

81. "In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere."

-Herman Melville.

82. "You cannot hide the soul."

-Herman Melville.

83. "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run."

-Herman Melville.

84. "Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

-Herman Melville.

85. "Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own."

-Herman Melville.

86. "There is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid."

-Herman Melville.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Herman Melville quotes then why not take a look at [Edgar Allan Poe quotes], or [Mark Twain quotes].