Herman Melville Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

  Herman Melville

  Brother, Ocean, Keys

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.9

• Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.

  Herman Melville

  Brother, Crazy, Boys

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.9

• Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy-start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool-cucumbers is the word-easy, easy-only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys-that's all. Start her!

  Herman Melville

  Strong, Boys, Sea

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.317, Velvet Element Books

• 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.

  Herman Melville

  Wise, Thinking, Giving

  Herman Melville (2016). “The Confidence-Man”, p.31, Open Road Media

• Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

  Herman Melville

  Fire, Giving, Woe

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.400

• Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.

  Herman Melville

  Flames, Whales, Giving

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.156

• 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

• A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits' end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

  Herman Melville

  Children, Father, Simple

  Herman Melville (2012). “Typee: A Romance of the South Seas (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.129, Jazzybee Verlag

• As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Giving, Ships

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war”, p.115

• Though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course by a blast re sistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed by the brunt of things before my prime, still fly before the gale. ... If after all these fearful fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained; yet in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.

  Herman Melville

  Giving, Quests, Wrecks

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4644, Delphi Classics

• For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices.... The prejudiced against color finds several hundred millions of people of all shades of color, and all degrees of intellect, rank, and social worth, generals, judges, priests, and kings, and learns to give up his foolish prejudice.

  Herman Melville

  Travel, Kings, Giving Up

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.422, Northwestern University Press

• Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

  Herman Melville

  Art, Writing, Giving

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.428

• The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.

  Herman Melville

  Giving, Promise, Way

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.148

• Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.

  Herman Melville

  God, Lying, Ideas

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.272, Herman Melville

• Let us only hate hatred; and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Hate, Fall

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.56

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