Herman Melville Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Men

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.5186, Delphi Classics

• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Fleas

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

• For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

  Herman Melville

  Book, Cash, May

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.159, Velvet Element Books

• The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Past, Tyrants

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1541, Delphi Classics

• 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.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Literature

  Moby Dick ch. 104 (1851)

• If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.

  Herman Melville

  Dream, Hurt, Fear

  1854 'The Encantadas, Sketch Eighth', in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, May.

• For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

  Herman Melville

  Fear, Book, Men

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.328, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

• Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Doors

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle, Hershel Parker (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.630, Northwestern University Press

• I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Wicked, Lambs

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4898, Delphi Classics

• Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.

  Herman Melville

  Lying, Book, Giving

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.481, Velvet Element Books

• The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

  Herman Melville

  Ocean, Book, Dark

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.293, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

• Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.

  Herman Melville

  Reading, Book, Men

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4516, Delphi Classics

• I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf--at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel--you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety--& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Creativity, Men

• I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Rome, Feelings

  Herman Melville (2001). “Tales, Poems, and Other Writings”

• 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”

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