“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and...” — Herman Melville Quote

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”

“A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.”

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

“The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

“A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society.”

“As a young man, I lived through the Great Depression, when banks failed and so many lost their jobs and homes and went hungry. I was fortunate to have a job at a canning factory that paid 25 cents an hour.”