Frases de Herman Melville

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“Sou atormentado por uma coceira interminável por coisas distantes. Eu adoro navegar por mares proibidos.”

“A arte é a objectivação do sentimento.”

“Falam da dignidade do trabalho. Bah! A dignidade está no ócio.”

“Postado no topo do mastro de meu navio durante um alvorecer que avermelhava o céu e o mar, vi certa feita um vasto bando de baleias no oriente, todas rumando para o sol; em dado momento, vibraram conjuntamente as caudas arvoradas. Pareceu-me naquele instante que tão grandiosa mostra de adoração dos deuses jamais fora vista, mesmo na Pérsia, a terra dos adoradores do fogo. Como Ptolomeu Filópator testemunhou com frequencia ao elefante africano, testemunho pois com relação à baleia, declarando-a o mais devoto de todos o seres. Pois, de acordo como o Rei Juba, os elefantes de guerra da antiguidade saudavam frequentemente a manhãcom as trombas erguidas no mais profundo silêncio."
Pg. 450”

“Quem jamais fracassou em algo, não pode alcançar a grandeza.”

“Pela arte foi criado esse grande Leviatã denominado Comunidade ou Estado - (em latim, Civitas) que não é mais que um homem artificial”. THOMAS HOBBES. SENTENÇA DE ABERTURA DO “LEVIATÔ.”

“Sou um homem que desde a juventude sempre teve a mais firme convicção de que a forma de vida mais fácil é a melhor.”

“A superstição prova que, por ignorante que seja, o homem sente nele uma alma imortal que aspira ao desconhecido da vida futura.”

“Não é raro que um homem, a quem se intimida de um modo sem precedentes, completamente insólito e irracional, comece a duvidar das suas crenças mais banais. Por mais estranho que isso possa parecer, ele começa a desconfiar que a justiça e a razão estejam do outro lado. Assim, se há pessoas imparciais presentes, recorre-se a elas, em busca de ajuda por causa de suas ideias titubeantes.”

“Se a natureza não é contra nós, também não é por nós.”

“Se queres fazer um livro poderoso, deves escolher um tema poderoso.”

“As minhas primeiras emoções tinham sido a melancolia mais pura e a compaixão mais sincera, mas na mesma proporção em que o desamparo de Bartleby crescia na minha fantasia, aquela melancolia se transformava em medo, e a compaixão, em repulsa. É tão verdadeiro e ao mesmo tempo tão terrivel o fato de que, ao vermos ou presenciarmos a miséria, os nossos melhores sentimentos são despertados até um cer
to ponto; mas, em certos casos especiais, não passam disso. Erram os que afirmam que é devido apenas ao egoísmo inerente ao coração humano. Na verdade, provém de uma certa impotência em remediar um mal excessivo e orgânico. Para uma pessoa sensivel, a piedade é quase sempre uma dor. Quando afinal percebe que tal piedade não significa um socorro eficaz, o bom senso compele a alma a desvencilhar-se dela. O que vi naquela manhã convenceu-me de que o escrivão era vítima de um mal inato e incurável. Eu podia dar esmolas ao seu corpo, mas o seu corpo não lhe doía; era a sua alma que sofria, e ela estava fora do meu alcance.”

“Todas as guerras são infantis e desencadeadas por crianças.”

“É melhor fracassar na originalidade do que ter êxito na imitação.”

“O ato de pagar talvez seja o castigo mais desagradável que os dois ladrões de pomar nos legaram.”

“Neste mundo, companheiros, o pecado que paga seu percurso pode viajar livremente, mesmo sem passaporte; enquanto a virtude, como uma pobre, é detida em todas as fronteiras.”

“Prefiro embarcar com um canibal sóbrio do que com alguém civilizado e bêbado.”

“Independentemente do que te apresente a fortuna, não tenhas medo de fazer coisas.”

“Que maravilhosamente familiares são os loucos!”

“Não podemos viver apenas para nós mesmos. Milhares de fibras ligam-nos aos nossos compatriotas humanos.”

“Ninguém pode salvar ninguém. Temos de nos salvar a nós próprios.”

“E quem chegasse ao caos da boca deste monstro, fosse besta, navio ou pedra, ele engolia incontinente com sua bocarra enorme e fétida, e perecia no abismo sem fundo de seu estômago”. PHILLEMON HOLLAND. “A MORAL DE PLUTARCO”.”

“Saber envelhecer é a obra-prima da sabedoria e um dos capítulos mais difíceis na grande arte de viver.”

“Pense que não, é o meu décimo primeiro mandamento; e dormir quando puder, é o meu décimo segundo.”

“O verdadeiro trabalho é a necessidade da condição terrena da humanidade pobre. A dignidade está no lazer.”

“"No momento, eu preferiria não ser um pouco razoável", foi sua resposta levemente cadavérica.”

“The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.”

“For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.”

“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”

“Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.”

“Oh, give me again the rover's life — the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”

“Youth is the time when hearts are large,
And stirring wars
Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn
To the blade it draws.”

“Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilisation and christianize Christendom?”

“Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.”

“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”

“What troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred —
Saturnians through life's Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.”

“The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, — at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge — that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public”

“Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.”

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

“If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military ship. And the more that some sort of trouble should really be apprehended the more do the officers keep that apprehension to themselves; tho' not the less unostentatious vigilance may be augmented.
In the present instance the sentry placed over the prisoner had strict orders to let no one have communication with him but the Chaplain. And certain unobtrusive measures were taken absolutely to insure this point.”

“I cannot analyse my heart, though it then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I felt my man's manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I but swung to an instinct in me — the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls-with him, I meant to drag Captain Claret from this earthly tribunal of his to that of Jehovah and let Him decide between us. No other way could I escape the scourge.”

“His was the scorn which thinks it not worth the while to be scornful. Those he most scorned, never knew it.”

“Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”

“"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable," was his mildly cadaverous reply.”

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

“Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.”

“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"”

“What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.”

“At the height of their madness
The night winds pause,
Recollecting themselves;
But no lull in these wars.”

“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”

“And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)”

“The more and the more that he wrote, and the deeper and the deeper that he dived, Pierre saw the everlasting elusiveness of Truth; the universal lurking insincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts. Like knavish cards, the leaves of all great books were covertly packed. He was but packing one set the more; and that a very poor jaded set and pack indeed. So that there was nothing he more spurned, than his own aspirations; nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself. The brightest success, now seemed intolerable to him, since he so plainly saw, that the brightest success could not be the sole offspring of Merit; but of Merit for the one thousandth part, and nine hundred and ninety-nine combining and dovetailing accidents for the rest.”

“There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan. Yet the work of Reconstruction, if admitted to be feasible at all, demands little but common sense and Christian charity. Little but these? These are much.”

“But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.”