Herman Melville Quotes on God (9 Quotes)

But what is worship? - to do the will of God - that is worship. And what is the will of God? - to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me - that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man.

Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

So man's insanity is heaven's sense and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return

..fiery yearnings their own phantom-futures make, and deem it present. So, after all these fearful, fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained - - yet, in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.

Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.

But if the great sun move not of himself, but is as an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating. does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.