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
Were this world an endless pain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage.
A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices.... The prejudiced against color finds several hundred millions of people of all shades of color, and all degrees of intellect, rank, and social worth, generals, judges, priests, and kings, and learns to give up his foolish prejudice.
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.
No utter surprise can come to him Who reaches Shakespeare's core; That which we seek and shun is there - Man's final lore
So philosophers so throughly comprehend us as horses.
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.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I will go to it laughing.
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
This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.