Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Herman Melville

Man

Need

Want

" There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. "

" Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things. "

" Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. "

" To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. "

" Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. "

" Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. "

" He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. "

Herman Melville

Great

Somewhere

" Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land. "

" Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. "

" A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities. "

" There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them. "

" Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged. "

Herman Melville

Poor

Will

" The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love. "

" Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth. "

" At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect. "

" To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment. "

" There are hardly five critics in America; and several of them are asleep. "

" I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge. "

Herman Melville

Made

Handsome

" Truth is in things, and not in words. "

" Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. "

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

" There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. "

" To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another. "

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

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

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

" Art is the objectification of feeling. "

" Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. "