The quotations of

Herman Melville

American writer and poet

1819–1891

37 quotes, most often on Writing, Truth & Lies and Philosophy.

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter IXIn context
- Honor
- Virtue
Delight is to him⁠—a far, far upward, and inward delight⁠—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter IXIn context
- Character
- Courage
Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XIIn context
- Philosophy
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XIIIn context
For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XVIIn context
- Success
I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XVIIIn context
- Religion
A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXIVIn context
- Education
- Experience
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXIXIn context
- Comedy
- Sleep
Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Anger
- Motivation & Goals
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Philosophy
- Truth & Lies
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Anger
- Pride
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XLIIn context
- Good & Evil
Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter LXVIIIIn context
- Advice
- Character
O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter LXXIn context
- Nature
- Philosophy
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 (1851), Chapter CIVIn context
- Writing

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