Herman Melville citáty
Herman Melville
Datum narození: 1. srpen 1818
Datum úmrtí: 28. září 1891
Herman Melville byl americký realistický spisovatel a básník.
Díla
Citáty Herman Melville
„Lepší spát se střízlivým kanibalem, než opilým křesťanem.“
— Herman Melville, kniha Bílá velryba
Originál: (en) Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Zdroj: [Melville, Herman, 2012, Moby Dick, Cherry Hill Publishing, angličtina, 978-1-6207-900-69]
„We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.“
Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855) :
: There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others—operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. ...Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.
Misattributed
„It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.“
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Kontext: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Kontext: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.
„One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.“
— Herman Melville, kniha Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
„Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.“
— Herman Melville, kniha Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Bk. XIV, ch. 1
A paraphrase of the last portion of this has sometimes been cited as a quotation of Melville: God's one and only voice is silence.
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
„A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.“
— Herman Melville, kniha Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Bk. IV, ch. 5
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Zdroj: Pierre: or, the Ambiguities
„The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.“
— Herman Melville, kniha White-Jacket
Zdroj: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 93
Kontext: The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would. From the last ills no being can save another; therein each man must be his own saviour. For the rest, whatever befall us, let us never train our murderous guns inboard; let us not mutiny with bloody pikes in our hands. Our Lord High Admiral will yet interpose; and though long ages should elapse, and leave our wrongs unredressed, yet, shipmates and world-mates! let us never forget, that, Whoever afflict us, whatever surround, Life is a voyage that's homeward-bound!
„I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.“
Zdroj: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
„It is not down on any map; true places never are.“
Zdroj: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
„True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure.“
Letter to Catherine G. Lansing (5 September 1877), published in The Melville Log : A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819-1891 (1951) by Jay Leyda, Vol. 2, p. 765
Kontext: Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.
„With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel“
Misgivings, st. 2
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)
Kontext: With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
„This son of Sirach even says — I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy friends'; not, observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends, thy false friends, but thy friends, thy real friends — that is to say, not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly trusted.“
Zdroj: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), Ch. 45
Kontext: I cannot tell you how thankful I am for your reminding me about the apocrypha here. For the moment, its being such escaped me. Fact is, when all is bound up together, it's sometimes confusing. The uncanonical part should be bound distinct. And, now that I think of it, how well did those learned doctors who rejected for us this whole book of Sirach. I never read anything so calculated to destroy man's confidence in man. This son of Sirach even says — I saw it but just now: 'Take heed of thy friends'; not, observe, thy seeming friends, thy hypocritical friends, thy false friends, but thy friends, thy real friends — that is to say, not the truest friend in the world is to be implicitly trusted. Can Rochefoucault equal that? I should not wonder if his view of human nature, like Machiavelli's, was taken from this Son of Sirach. And to call it wisdom — the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach! Wisdom, indeed! What an ugly thing wisdom must be! Give me the folly that dimples the cheek, say I, rather than the wisdom that curdles the blood. But no, no; it ain't wisdom; it's apocrypha, as you say, sir. For how can that be trustworthy that teaches distrust?
