Herman Melville Benito Cereno Quotes

The United States wore empire on its brow ~ Herman Melville

Only the man who says no is free ~ Herman Melville

content with his own companionship; ~ Herman Melville

[ ... ] and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly. ~ Herman Melville

I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf
at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel
you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety
& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble. ~ Herman Melville

But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do
remember that
and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. ~ Herman Melville

So long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature. ~ Herman Melville

Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. ~ Herman Melville

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone? ~ Herman Melville

But truth is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the way. ~ Herman Melville

Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. ~ Herman Melville

Hark ye yet again,--the little lower layer. 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. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. ~ Herman Melville

In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. ~ Herman Melville

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath - "The Spouter Inn: - Peter Coffin." Coffin? - Spouter? - Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. ~ Herman Melville

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

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. ~ Herman Melville

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale ... from hell's heart I stab at thee. ~ Herman Melville

Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. ~ Herman Melville

For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men ~ Herman Melville

There is a delicacy in it equalled only by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk. ~ Herman Melville

There is a woe that is wisdom, a woe that is madness. ~ Herman Melville

Stay true to the dreams of thy youth. ~ Herman Melville

I have negotiated with cannibals in foreign tongues and Arabian sea captains and French criminals. I have bartered with demons and angels! I am not about to let a country doctor take advantage of me. ~ Mark Beauregard

Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. ~ Herman Melville

Let all your crew pull strong, come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand. ~ Herman Melville

The expedition for the occupation of the Marquesas had sailed from Brest in the spring of 1842, and the secret of its destination was solely in the possession of its commander. No wonder that those who contemplated such a signal infraction of the rights of humanity should have sought to veil the enormity from the eyes of the world. And yet, notwithstanding their iniquitous conduct in this and in other matters, the French have ever plumed themselves upon being the most humane and polished of nations. A high degree of refinement, however, does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged. One ~ Herman Melville

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. ~ Herman Melville

And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States"
"Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael"
"Bloody Battle in Affghanistan ~ Herman Melville

Time, time; if I but only had the time, ~ Herman Melville

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. ~ Herman Melville

Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls. ~ Herman Melville

Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. ~ Herman Melville

That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan. ~ Herman Melville

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: - through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom). and then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. ~ Herman Melville

For backward or forward, eternity is the same; already have we been the nothing we dread to be. ~ Herman Melville

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged. ~ Herman Melville

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true - not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. ~ Herman Melville

The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. ~ Herman Melville

The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads. ~ Herman Melville

Nippers was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers - ambition and indigestion. ~ Herman Melville

Tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. ~ Herman Melville

The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Finally, ~ Herman Melville

A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon. ~ Herman Melville

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff! ~ Herman Melville

The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all. ~ Herman Melville