Herman Melville

More from Herman Melville

• Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?

  White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 64

  • Christianity

• 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 (1853)

  • Happiness

• The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…

  Billy Budd, Sailor (1891), Ch. 28

  • Truth & Lies
  • Writing

All 37 quotes from Herman Melville

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy