Herman Melville

"It is the privilege of the reader to slow down the author who goes too fast."

"Some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth."

"To know how to say what others only think is to be a poet."

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

"Call me Ishmael."

"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast."

"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."

"The very often lies in that one particular thing which a man has most reason to be ashamed of."

"I would prefer not to."

"We are all somehow docked of some royal prerogative."

"Grief to the heart like a stone."

"Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his honesty."

"Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced."

"Nothing is but thinking makes it so."

"The profoundest silence is something to hear."

"Immortality will come to such as the soul is fit for."

"There is a godly uneasiness, a holy disquietude, a blessed unrest that keeps the soul marching onward."

"As all things are mixed, so all things are possible."

"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."

"To live is to feel and know thyself alive."

"True knowledge lives in knowing you know nothing."

"The mind is nobly occupied whenever it is employed about any difficulties."

"Patience and time do more than strength or passion."

"Thought is the shadow of reality."

"The human heart has hidden treasures."

"All the melancholy joy of a great friendship."

"There's something in a lie that sets the teeth on edge."

"Heaven have mercy on us all."

"Madness is undefinable."

"Meditation and water are wedded forever."