Herman Melville Quotes

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

Welcome to the world of bullshit, my dear. You have arrived.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

Sometimes when you think something is shiny and gold, it tends to be rusted and bronze, but that's just the way it is, man.

The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.

Disillusion is the last illusion.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

You know he can’t save you, right? In the real world? That guy, right there.

There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment

A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf', Which at first seemed a vessel with sweet wine For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline You went through sloven spirit, craven heart And cynic indolence. And here the art Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce And made your shame our shame ~ Your head in bronze!

Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary

Most loverspicture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else--their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

Illusions are bound to be shattered

I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.

People b'lief the world is built so an tellin em it ain't so caves the roofs on their heads'n'maybe yours.

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.