Herman Melville Quotes

I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing... like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.

Night is the mother of counsels.

The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden.

CONTEMPLATE THE workings of this world, listen to the words of the wise, and take all that is good as your own. With this as your base, open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right before you.

Silence is an answer to a wise man.

Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.

They only babble who practise not reflection.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

I think there's a knowingness in my face.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

To contemplate is to look at shadows.

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.

And I directed my heart to inquire and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.