Herman Melville Quotes
Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
Melville, Herman. Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. 16 Apr. 1851. The Letters of Herman Melville, edited by Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, Yale UP, 1960, p. 125.
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.