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Herman Melville

Literary Birthday – 1 August – Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born 1 August 1819, and died 28 September 1891.

Herman Melville Quotes

  1. Call me Ishmael.
  2. Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors.
  3. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
  4. We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibres, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
  5. Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
  6. Never joke at funerals, or during business transactions.
  7. To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
  8. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
  9. A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
  10. Truth is in things, and not in words.

Herman Melville was an American writer best known for the novel Moby Dick. (The simple story of Captain Ahab who pursues the white whale, Moby Dick, which finally kills him.) He also wrote, among others, Typee, a romanticised account of his experiences in Polynesia; and the novella Billy Budd. He was not a great success as a writer during his lifetime. Melville’s travelogues based on voyages to the South Seas and stories based on his time in the merchant marine and navy had some success, but his popularity declined afterwards. His books were out of print by 1876. He died not knowing that Moby Dick would become a cultural phenomenon, and that the term ‘white whale’ would still be used and understood 200 years later, even by people who had never read his books. In 1919, the centennial of Melville’s birth coincided with a renewed interest in his writings known as the “Melville revival”. After many years of neglect, modern criticism secured his reputation with that of the great American writers. Follow this link to find out where the author wrote his book.

Source for Image: Joseph Oriel Eaton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herman_Melville_by_Joseph_O_Eaton.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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Posted on: 1st August 2013
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