Herman Melville quote: "Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form."

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, whe...
HERMAN MELVILLE

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
HERMAN MELVILLE

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
HERMAN MELVILLE

So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignit...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself ca...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-to...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
HERMAN MELVILLE

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
HERMAN MELVILLE

They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE

For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
HERMAN MELVILLE

It is not down in any map, true places never are.
HERMAN MELVILLE

In glades they meet skull after skull
Where pine cones lay-the rusted gun,
Green shoes full of...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the gr...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught tha...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with others; and along those fibers,...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!
HERMAN MELVILLE

'I will have no man in my boat,' said Starbuck, 'who is not afraid of a whale.' By this, he seemed t...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world? Then we pygmie...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I saw a ship of material build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madne...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly...
HERMAN MELVILLE

If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dre...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, --for it is a sign of strength to be wea...
HERMAN MELVILLE

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vi...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own go...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon Go...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticism...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world;...
HERMAN MELVILLE

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.
HERMAN MELVILLE

The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in real...
HERMAN MELVILLE

The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will th...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter. To begin: there's Arie...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had...
HERMAN MELVILLE

People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends....
HERMAN MELVILLE

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinct...
HERMAN MELVILLE

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
HERMAN MELVILLE

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man tak...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Socie...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity...
HERMAN MELVILLE

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
HERMAN MELVILLE

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
HERMAN MELVILLE

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
HERMAN MELVILLE

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cra...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I would prefer not to.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticism...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold peril...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. The...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
HERMAN MELVILLE

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the c...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man can not be great.
HERMAN MELVILLE

The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Were this world an endless pain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and d...
HERMAN MELVILLE

From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wond...
HERMAN MELVILLE

To the last, I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last b...
HERMAN MELVILLE

When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart t...
HERMAN MELVILLE

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
HERMAN MELVILLE

No utter surprise can come to him Who reaches Shakespeare's core; That which we seek and shun is the...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellowmen; and along those...
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
HERMAN MELVILLE

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be w...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my s...
HERMAN MELVILLE

This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Call me Ishmael.
HERMAN MELVILLE

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man tak...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race...
HERMAN MELVILLE

..fiery yearnings their own phantom-futures make, and deem it present. So, after all these fearful, ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Yet habit--strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
HERMAN MELVILLE

Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when i...
HERMAN MELVILLE

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only w...
HERMAN MELVILLE

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Vir...
HERMAN MELVILLE

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys
HERMAN MELVILLE

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cra...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, -for it is a sign of strength to be weak...
HERMAN MELVILLE

All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of h...
HERMAN MELVILLE

It is not down in any map; true places never are.
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever e...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Having perfected his arrangements, he would get my pipe, and, lighting it, would hand it to me. Ofte...
HERMAN MELVILLE

To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either...
HERMAN MELVILLE

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas,...
HERMAN MELVILLE

It is not down on any map; true places never are.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the univers...
HERMAN MELVILLE

At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my s...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in p...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it wer...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my las...
HERMAN MELVILLE

. . . these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of t...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the gr...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Grab your oars and clutch your souls!
HERMAN MELVILLE

I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the wor...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.
HERMAN MELVILLE

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and alo...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Thou hast but enraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my s...
HERMAN MELVILLE

[T]here is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-w...
HERMAN MELVILLE

La felicidad busca la luz, por eso nos parece que el mundo es alegre; pero el sufrimiento se esconde...
HERMAN MELVILLE

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
HERMAN MELVILLE

In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested appl...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in...
HERMAN MELVILLE

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
HERMAN MELVILLE

[T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago...
HERMAN MELVILLE

So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that...
HERMAN MELVILLE

He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were m...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity
HERMAN MELVILLE

Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight is said to be the only truth
HERMAN MELVILLE

Art is the objectification of feeling.
HERMAN MELVILLE

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses
HERMAN MELVILLE

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a swee...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be wea...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Ничто так не выделяло этого человека, как его очевидна�...
HERMAN MELVILLE

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker’s last. And in...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettin...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Ignorance is the parent of fear.
HERMAN MELVILLE

To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
HERMAN MELVILLE

I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all dee...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Preferiría no hacerlo
HERMAN MELVILLE

...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and p...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!
HERMAN MELVILLE

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. The...
HERMAN MELVILLE

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned ent...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
HERMAN MELVILLE

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve ...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted dow...
HERMAN MELVILLE

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinar...
HERMAN MELVILLE

For tho' we know what we ought to be; & what it would be very sweet & beautiful to be; yet w...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, o...
HERMAN MELVILLE

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the S...
HERMAN MELVILLE

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosopher to task, upbraid...
HERMAN MELVILLE

You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelegence; f...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itsel...
HERMAN MELVILLE

There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual fairmind...
HERMAN MELVILLE

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true...
HERMAN MELVILLE

I have nine children... and one of them is an invalid. Her mother is obliged to take her away in the...
MELVILLE FULLER

What you want to do, and what you can do, is limited only by what you can dream.
MIKE MELVILLE

The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the consti...
MELVILLE FULLER

The fact that the chief of staff of the land army was so exposed suggests that the command structure...
CHRIS MELVILLE

However the... head of state has visibly aged in the past two years and his health may have deterior...
CHRIS MELVILLE

It is the same to me, whether I rot in the air or in the ground. The earth is the Lord's.
ANDREW MELVILLE

Am I not, three score and eight years old, unto the which age none of my fourteen brethren came; and...
ANDREW MELVILLE

The most glaringly obvious fact about the present case is the significant media and public interest ...
RODNEY MELVILLE

Do you want me to shut the trial down this afternoon? ... You are not to engage in this kind of inte...
RODNEY MELVILLE

I've got tooth marks on my heart.
MIKE MELVILLE

Judging by his reaction, Bongo feels surrounded by nebulous threats. The root of his anxiety is not ...
CHRIS MELVILLE

Midnight Omen Deja vu" - Because everyone should experience love in the Caribbean...at least once in...
MARTI MELVILLE

inherently improbable and not credible.
RODNEY MELVILLE

It's a subpoena. He has to obey,
RODNEY MELVILLE

It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into t...
HERMAN HESSE

I started at Pillsbury as a manager in one of their analysis functions, then worked my way up the co...
HERMAN CAIN

The Capone era. That was my time. Capone was a big baseball fan. He'd walk into the ballpark lik...
BILLY HERMAN

I've never heard a crowd boo a homer, but I've heard plenty of boos after a strikeout.
GEORGE HERMAN

When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
HERMAN WOUK

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws...
HERMAN HESSE

Life was a colorful painful pageant to her, in which right and wrong were wobbly yardsticks. Values ...
HERMAN WOUK

Let us fill a cup and drink to that most noble, ridiculous, laughable, sublime figure in our lives.....
HERMAN WOUK

African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservat...
HERMAN CAIN

Authority is not power; that's coercion. Authority is not knowledge; that's persuasion, or seduction...
HERMAN KAHN

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.

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Herman Melville

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.

Herman Melville

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