Herman Melville Quotes About Age

Quotes about: Age

• 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.

  Herman Melville

  Life, Birthday, Time

• The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Vanity, Names

  Herman Melville (2006). “Bartleby the Scrivener: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

• Did all the lets and bars appear
  To every just or larger end,
  Whence should come the trust and cheer?
  Youth must its ignorant impulse lend--
  Age finds place in the rear.
  All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
  The champions and enthusiasts of the state

  Herman Melville

  Cheer, War, Boys

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.22

• Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.

  Herman Melville

  Father, Book, Age

  Herman Melville (1963). “Works: Redburn, his first voyage”

• All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

  Herman Melville

  Beautiful, Lying, Reality

  Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.214, 谷月社

• In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.

  Herman Melville

  Death, Men, Childhood

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.347

• Time is made up of various ages; and each thinks its own a novelty.

  Herman Melville

  Thinking, Age, Generations

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.235

• The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man, and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man, do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world.

  Herman Melville

  Wise, Children, Men

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre or The Ambiguities”, p.287, 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

  Time, Insomnia, Men

  1851 Moby Dick, ch.29.

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