Top 500 Herman Melville Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 2 of 10

51. “Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.”

— Herman Melville

52. “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

53. “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

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

— Herman Melville

55. “There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.”

— Herman Melville

56. “Leviathan is not the biggest fish; – I have heard of Krakens.”

— Herman Melville

57. “There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.”

— Herman Melville

58. “Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.”

— Herman Melville

59. “See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”

— Herman Melville

60. “Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”

— Herman Melville

Featured in: Reading Quotes

61. “There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.”

— Herman Melville

62. “Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.”

— Herman Melville

63. “One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.”

— Herman Melville

64. “They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.”

— Herman Melville

65. “Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

— Herman Melville

66. “But I shall follow the endless, winding way, – the flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.”

— Herman Melville

67. “The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.”

— Herman Melville

68. “If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury; if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.”

— Herman Melville

69. “But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.”

— Herman Melville

70. “Nature is nobody’s ally.”

— Herman Melville

71. “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

— Herman Melville

72. “Youth is immortal; Tis the elderly only grow old!”

— Herman Melville

73. “Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?”

— Herman Melville

74. “As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.”

— Herman Melville

75. “I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself.”

— Herman Melville

76. “The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be.”

— Herman Melville

77. “The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.”

— Herman Melville

78. “But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.”

— Herman Melville

79. “He says NO! In thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.”

— Herman Melville

80. “Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

— Herman Melville

81. “A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.”

— Herman Melville

82. “If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.”

— Herman Melville

83. “There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear – the city of London and the South Seas.”

— Herman Melville

84. “The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating them, till they are left living with half a heart and half a lung.”

— Herman Melville

85. “There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.”

— Herman Melville

86. “Where do murderers go, man! Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?”

— Herman Melville

87. “All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate – Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.”

— Herman Melville

88. “I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.”

— Herman Melville

89. “He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen.”

— Herman Melville

90. “At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.”

— Herman Melville

91. “Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar.”

— Herman Melville

92. “Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.”

— Herman Melville

93. “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.”

— Herman Melville

94. “Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass;.”

— Herman Melville

95. “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

— Herman Melville

96. “There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”

— Herman Melville

97. “My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.”

— Herman Melville

98. “Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.”

— Herman Melville

99. “Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?”

— Herman Melville

100. “He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.”

— Herman Melville