Herman Melville Quotes

The mighty US suddenly seemed as impotent as a beached whale.

There is nothing nameable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

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.

If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.

He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no, why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unencumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet bag.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.