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
This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it.
All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.
In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.
Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.
The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.
So philosophers so throughly comprehend us as horses.
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas.
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with ourfellowmen? and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run ascauses, and they come back to us as effects.
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.