(1819–1891)
U.S. novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist
Herman Melville
The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open.
Moby Dick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5.
There never was a very great man yet who spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is inspiration; and having been once out of sight of land, has been the making of many a true poet and the blasting of many pretenders; for, d’ye see, there’s no gammon about the ocean; it knocks the false keel right off a pretender’s bows; it tells him just what he is, and makes him feel it, too. A sailor’s life, I say, is the thing to bring us mortals out.
Herman Melville, White-Jacket in Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick (New York: Library of America, 1983), 635.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Billy Budd and Other Tales (Signet Classics, 1998), revised ed., 85.