Herman Melville Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none. Bartleby the Scrivener

2. But as such mere illustrations are almost universally taken for solutions (and perhaps they are the only possible humans solutions), therefore it may help to the temporary quiet of some inquiring mind; and so not be wholly without use. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

3. Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. Moby-Dick or, the Whale

4. I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

5. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

6. Life is governed by chance, not wisdom. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

7. 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. Moby-Dick or, the Whale

8. [T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. Moby-Dick or, the Whale

9. Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras. Moby Dick

10. Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it Moby-Dick or, the Whale

11. One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. 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 who have tried it. Moby-Dick or, the Whale

12. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right. Moby-Dick or, the Whale

13. The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Moby-Dick or, the Whale