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
But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there.
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
There is a woe that is wisdom, a woe that is madness.
War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.
For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
We become sad in the first place because we have nothing stirring to do.
Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.
There's something ever egotistical in mountain tops and towers, and all things grand and lofty.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion.