4 Herman Melville Quotes on Art

Herman Melville quotes on art

1. Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity-reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel-Art.

16. Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors. Nor would any true man take exception to this;-least of all, he who writes,-'When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.'

17. In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,-even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

58. The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges...