Herman Melville Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Herman Melville with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
Image design Botanical Sage
Read & copy
“I would prefer not to.”
Meaning & context
Bartleby’s mild repeated refusal becomes the story’s central form of resistance, forcing the narrator to confront limits on authority, obligation and understanding.
Source details
Bartleby, the Scrivener, Project Gutenberg #11231. Bartleby speaks this line when the lawyer asks him to help examine copied documents; it is fictional character dialogue, not a general prescription to refuse work or obligations.
Source identified2
Image design Rose Studio
Read & copy
“But it is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation.”
Meaning & context
Melville values an authentic creative attempt above technically successful copying, making independent invention more important than safe imitation.
Source details
“Hawthorne and His Mosses” (1850), represented in Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces, Project Gutenberg #76513. Melville is arguing for literary originality and an independent American voice; the sentence is about creative imitation, not a universal ranking of every failure above every success.
Source identified3
Image design Charcoal
Read & copy
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
Meaning & context
Ishmael describes going to sea as his personal response when his mood turns bleak and restless, linking emotional self-recognition with movement toward the ocean.
Source details
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale, Chapter 1, “Loomings,” represented by Project Gutenberg #2701. Ishmael describes going to sea when his mood becomes grim, restless and drawn toward death imagery. The passage is fictional first-person narration and a literary coping pattern, not mental-health, suicide-prevention or medical advice.