Melville Quotes

“And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.”

“When the vision fill yours mind and passio hits your gut, the need to write it down cannot be stifled.”

“Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods.”

“Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it.”

“and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.”

“...flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.”

“Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.”