Herman Melville
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. ― Herman Melville
Category: Dark Romantic
Herman Melville
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The… Continue reading Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world. ― Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition. (1846)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Death should take me while I am in the mood. ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance. (Dodo Press October 25, 2005) Originally published 1852.
Herman Melville
The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water snow. ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale. Richard Bentley October 18, 1851 (Britain), Harper & Brothers November 14, 1851 (U.S.)
Herman Melville
The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true– not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men… Continue reading Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or… Continue reading Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion. ― Edgar Allan Poe
Herman Melville
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or the Whale. (Modern Library, 1992, originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1851)
Herman Melville
And he piled upon the whale’s white hump. A sum of all the rage and hate felt by his own race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it. – Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Richard Bentley October 18, 1851 (Britain), Harper & Brothers November 14, 1851… Continue reading Herman Melville
The Vale of Soul-Making 