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

- Herman Melville

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

- Herman Melville

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

Truth is in things, and not in words.

- Herman Melville

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

- Herman Melville

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.

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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

- Herman Melville

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.

- Herman Melville

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

- Herman Melville