Top 51 Quotes by Herman Melville

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

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 that have tried it.

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.