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
„Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused.“
— Herman Melville, kniha White-Jacket
Zdroj: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 67
Kontext: Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused. The privilege, inborn and inalienable, that every man has of dying himself, and inflicting death upon another, was not given to us without a purpose. These are the last resources of an insulted and unendurable existence.
„It is a strange feeling — no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.“
Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157
Kontext: In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous — catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. 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 hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
„But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices?“
— Herman Melville, kniha Billy Budd, Sailor
Zdroj: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 2
Kontext: But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
