Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melvillewas an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period best known for Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick. His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 August 1819
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.
Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite; and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations; whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself
Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.