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Herman Melville, geboren als Herman Melvill war ein amerikanischer Schriftsteller, Dichter und Essayist. Melvilles Moby-Dick gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Romane der Weltliteratur.

✵ 1. August 1818 – 28. September 1891
Herman Melville Foto
Herman Melville: 159   Zitate 24   Gefällt mir

Herman Melville Berühmte Zitate

„Bis zum Letzten ring ich mit dir, aus dem Herzen der Hölle stech ich nach dir, dem Haß zu liebe spei' ich meinem letzten Hauch nach dir.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 135, Die Jagd - Der Dritte Tag

„Der Mensch ist ein geldgieriges Tier, und diese Eigenschaft kommt allzu oft seiner Güte in die Quere.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick

„Sie ist auf keiner Karte verzeichnet. Die wahren Orte sind das nie.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick, gemeint ist die Insel, die die Romanfigur Captain Ahab sucht

„Die Hölle ist eine Vorstellung, die sich ursprünglich einem unverdauten Apfelknödel verdankt und seither durch die erblichen, von Ramadanfesten genährten Gallenbeschwerden fortgeschrieben wurde.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 17, Der Ramadan. online-literature.com http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/18/; übersetzt von Matthias Jendits. 6. Auflage, btb Verlag.
Original engl.: "Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans."

Herman Melville Zitate und Sprüche

„[…], denn es gibt keine Torheit der Tiere auf Erden, welche der Irrsinn der Menschen nicht unendlich weit übertrifft.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 87, Die Grosse Armada, Abs. 21

Über Menschen , Tiere

„So woge weiter, tiefe, blaue See! Zehntausend Walspeckjäger pflügen dich umsonst.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 35, Im Masttop

Über Lügen

„Doch der Glaube sucht sich, wie der Schakal, seine Nahrung zwischen den Gräbern und zieht gerade aus diesen tödlichen Zweifeln seine lebenspendende Hoffnung.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 7, Die Kirche. online-literature.com http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/8/; übersetzt von Matthias Jendits. 6. Auflage, btb Verlag.
Original engl.: "But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."

Über Glauben , Über Hoffnung , Über Leben

„Menschen mögen im Verbund von Aktiengesellschaften und Nationen abscheulich wirken; es mag Schurken, Narren und Mörder unter ihnen geben; Menschen mögen gemeine und mickrige Visagen haben, aber der Mensch ist seinem Ideal nach ein so edles und funkelndes, ein so großartiges und strahlendes Geschöpf, daß all seine Mitmenschen herbeieilen sollten, um einen etwaigen Schandfleck mit ihren kostbarsten Gewändern zu bedecken.“

Herman Melville buch Moby-Dick

Moby Dick. Kapitel 26, Ritter und Knappen. online-literature.com http://www.online-literature.com/melville/mobydick/27/; übersetzt von Matthias Jendits. 6. Auflage, btb Verlag.
Original engl.: "Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but, man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes."

Über Menschen

„Doch der Glaube sucht sich, wie der Schakal, seine Nahrung zwischen den Gräbern und zieht gerade aus diesen tödlichen Zweifeln seine lebenspendende Hoffnung.“

Herman Melville
Über Glauben , Über Hoffnung

Herman Melville: Zitate auf Englisch

“The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.”

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Herman Melville buch White-Jacket

Quelle: White-Jacket

“For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.”

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Herman Melville

Quelle: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”

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Herman Melville buch The Encantadas

Sketch Eighth
The Encantadas (1854)

“Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”

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Herman Melville

Supplement
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“Oh, give me again the rover's life — the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”

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Herman Melville buch White-Jacket

Quelle: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 19

“Youth is the time when hearts are large,
And stirring wars
Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn
To the blade it draws.”

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Herman Melville

On the Slain Collegians, st. 1
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilisation and christianize Christendom?”

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Herman Melville buch White-Jacket

This has often been quoted with modernized American spelling, rendering it "to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?"
Quelle: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 64

“Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.”

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Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”

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Herman Melville

Epilogue
Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851)

“What troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred —
Saturnians through life's Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.”

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Herman Melville

On the Slain Collegians, st. 2
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

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Herman Melville

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

“Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.”

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Herman Melville buch Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. III, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

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Herman Melville

Quelle: Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851), Ch. 29 : Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

“If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; tho' not the less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.
In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict orders to let no one have communication with him but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to insure this point.”

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Herman Melville buch Billy Budd, Sailor

Quelle: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 23

“I cannot analyse my heart, though it then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I felt my man's manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I but swung to an instinct in me — the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls-with him, I meant to drag Captain Claret from this earthly tribunal of his to that of Jehovah and let Him decide between us. No other way could I escape the scourge.”

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Herman Melville buch White-Jacket

Quelle: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 67

“His was the scorn which thinks it not worth the while to be scornful. Those he most scorned, never knew it.”

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Herman Melville buch Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”

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Herman Melville buch Billy Budd, Sailor

Quelle: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 19

“"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.”

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Herman Melville buch Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

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Herman Melville

Timoleon http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=libraryscience, Art (1891)

“Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.”

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Herman Melville

Supplement
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"”

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Herman Melville buch Billy Budd, Sailor

Quelle: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 25

“What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.”

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Herman Melville buch Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.”

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Herman Melville

The Armies of the Wilderness, Pt. II, st. 5
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”

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Herman Melville buch White-Jacket

Quelle: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 36

“And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

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Herman Melville buch Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)”

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Herman Melville

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (June 1, 1851).

“The more and the more that he wrote, and the deeper and the deeper that he dived, Pierre saw the everlasting elusiveness of Truth; the universal lurking insincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts. Like knavish cards, the leaves of all great books were covertly packed. He was but packing one set the more; and that a very poor jaded set and pack indeed. So that there was nothing he more spurned, than his own aspirations; nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself. The brightest success, now seemed intolerable to him, since he so plainly saw, that the brightest success could not be the sole offspring of Merit; but of Merit for the one thousandth part, and nine hundred and ninety-nine combining and dovetailing accidents for the rest.”

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Herman Melville buch Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XXV, ch. 3
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but these? These are much.”

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Herman Melville

Supplement
Battle Pieces: And Aspects of the War (1860)

“But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.”

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Herman Melville buch Billy Budd, Sailor

Quelle: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 30, Billy in the Darbies

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