Herman Melville Quotes


There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.


Citations

Melville, Herman. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857.

Related Quotes

The Netherlands and Belgium then belonged to Spain. However, Protestantism was spreading to the Netherlands. The Duke of Alva was a Catholic fanatic and advised the King to send him and an army into the Lowlands to root out and kill the heretics. In contrast, the Duke of Feria counseled allowing the lowlands tolerance and warned that if the Inquisition and Alva’s army were introduced and would be feared as Alva wanted, the might get desperate and do unexpected things like revolt. The King, a Catholic fanatic himself, sent Alva and the Inquisition. In the next 12 years, fear spread throughout the lowlands. Finally, the people became so desperate that they did revolt and the lowlands gained their independence and Spain lost their most important and European possessions.


Herman Melville
Herman Melville
  • Born: August 1, 1819
  • Died: September 28, 1891
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Novelist

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.