In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. – Herman Melville
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. – Herman Melville
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone? – Herman Melville
Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. – Herman Melville
In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in. Within me is no disturbing interplay now, but only the steady currents of adaptation and of sympathy. – Haniel Long