Top 500 Herman Melville Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I would prefer not to.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Individuality Quotes, Ego Quotes, Rejection Quotes

2. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

— Herman Melville

3. “It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Failure Quotes

4. “God’s one and only voice is silence.”

— Herman Melville

5. “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Adventure Quotes, Quotes About Laughing, Quotes About Laughter

6. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.”

— Herman Melville

7. “The eyes are the gateway to the soul.”

— Herman Melville

8. “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.”

— Herman Melville

9. “Call me Ishmael.”

— Herman Melville

10. “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.”

— Herman Melville

11. “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”

— Herman Melville

12. “Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.”

— Herman Melville

13. “Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about.”

— Herman Melville

14. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

— Herman Melville

15. “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.”

— Herman Melville

16. “Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.”

— Herman Melville

17. “Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.”

— Herman Melville

18. “There’s magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.”

— Herman Melville

19. “A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Smile Quotes

20. “Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.”

— Herman Melville

21. “Failure is the true test of greatness.”

— Herman Melville

22. “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”

— Herman Melville

23. “All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.”

— Herman Melville

24. “Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

— Herman Melville

25. “Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.”

— Herman Melville

26. “To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”

— Herman Melville

27. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”

— Herman Melville

28. “I try all things, I achieve what I can.”

— Herman Melville

29. “Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

30. “Only the man who says no is free.”

— Herman Melville

31. “The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.”

— Herman Melville

32. “They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.”

— Herman Melville

33. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”

— Herman Melville

34. “We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world is not yet middle-aged.”

— Herman Melville

35. “Niggards are oftentimes neat.”

— Herman Melville

36. “A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing.”

— Herman Melville

37. “The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run.”

— Herman Melville

38. “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

— Herman Melville

39. “Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?”

— Herman Melville

40. “No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.”

— Herman Melville

41. “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

— Herman Melville

42. “There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”

— Herman Melville

43. “He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”

— Herman Melville

44. “We cannot live for ourselves alone.”

— Herman Melville

45. “I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.”

— Herman Melville

46. “There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.”

— Herman Melville

47. “Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.”

— Herman Melville

48. “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.”

— Herman Melville

49. “All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.”

— Herman Melville

50. “I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.”

— Herman Melville