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
I try all things, I achieve what I can.
Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused. The privilege, inborn and inalienable, that every man has of dying himself, and inflicting death upon another, was not given to us without a purpose. These are the last resources of an insulted and unendurable existence.
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
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.
Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
Failure is the true test of greatness
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.