Quotations From HERMAN MELVILLE

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• 11.

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

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. "Hawthorne And His Mosses," Literary World (August 17-24, 1850).
  
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• 12.

  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 (1819-91), U.S. author. Moby Dick, ch. 29 (1851).
  
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• 13.

  There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. The Confidence-Man (1857), ch. 5, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 10, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1984). Spoken by the man with a weed.
  
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• 14.

  Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. Moby Dick, ch. 110 (1851).
  
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• 15.

  We are idiot, younger-sons of gods, begotten in dotages divine; and our mothers all miscarry.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. Mardi (1849), ch. 180, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 3, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1970). Spoken by Babbalanja, the philosopher.
• 16.

  The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. The Confidence-Man (1857), ch. 14, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 10, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1984).
  
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• 17.

  The retaliation is apt to be in monstrous disproportion to the supposed offense; for when in anybody was revenge in its exactions aught else but an inordinate usurer?

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. Billy Budd, Sailor (posthumous), ch 13, eds. Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. (1962).
• 18.

  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 (1819-1891), U.S. author. Redburn (1849), ch. 40, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 4, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1969).
  
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• 19.

  They were in the jelly of youth.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. White-Jacket (1850), ch. 83, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 5, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1969). Referring to adolescent boys.
• 20.

  To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.

  Herman Melville (1819-1891), U.S. author. Redburn (1849), ch. 41, The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 4, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1969).