Herman Melville Quotes About Christianity

Quotes about: Christianity

• We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

  Herman Melville

  Death, Real, Grief

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1969). “Redburn: Works of Herman Melville Volume Four”, p.293, Northwestern University Press

• Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about.

  Herman Melville

  Grief, Joy, Suffering

• A chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving the host of the God of War--Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why, then, is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.

  Herman Melville

  War, Would Be, Purpose

  Herman Melville (2006). “Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories”, p.75, Bantam Classics

• Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.

  Herman Melville

  God, Law, Joy

  'Moby Dick' (1851) ch. 1

• It is against the will of God that the East should be Christianized.

  Herman Melville

  East, Christianity, Should

  Herman Melville, Howard C. Horsford, Lynn Horth (1989). “Journals”, p.81, Northwestern University Press

• We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?

  Herman Melville

  Afterlife, Heaven, May

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1380, Delphi Classics

• Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.

  Herman Melville

  Christian, War, Men

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket; Or, The World in the Man-of-war”, p.378

• There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues madethem great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.

  Herman Melville

  Taken, Humility, Greatness

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

• Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.

  Herman Melville

  Ignorant, Principles, Germs

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin