Skip to content

Author

Quotes by Herman Melville

American novelist, 1819–1891

Herman Melville drew on his years at sea on whaling ships and a frigate for Typee, Omoo and Moby-Dick (1851), the novel of Captain Ahab and the white whale that was a commercial failure and is now regarded as the great American novel. He spent his last decades as a customs inspector in New York.

2 verified quotes

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.

Herman Melville, Hawthorne and His Mosses, published in The Literary World, 1850 Verified quote Read its story
Create an imageImage

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 1, Loomings (opening sentence), 1851 Verified quote Read its story
Create an imageImage

Other authors