Clarel Quotes

“Go mad I cannot: I maintain
The perilous outpost of the sane.”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“Do they come,
The locusts, only to the bloom?
Prosperity sire them?”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“Nevertheless,
Were it a paradox to confess
A book's a man? If this be so,
Books be but part of nature. Oh,
'Tis studying nature, reading books;
And 'tis through Nature each heart look
Up to a God, or whatsoe'er
One images beyond our sphere.”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“Clarel the mentor frequent heard
The time for Christ's return allot:
A dream, and like a dream it blurred
The sense- faded, and was forgot.”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“Even death may prove unreal at last and stoics be astounded into heaven. Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned, Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind. That like the crocus budding through the snow, that like a swimmer rising from the deep, that like a burning secret which doth go. Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep, emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea and prove that death but routs life into victory.”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“Even death may prove unreal at last and stoics be astounded into heaven.
Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned, Clarel, thy heart,
the issues there but mind. That like the crocus budding through the snow, that
like a swimmer rising from the deep, that like a burning secret which doth
go. Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep, emerge thou mayst from
the last whelming sea and prove that death but routs life into victory.”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

“There sunk my heart--he spake so true
In that. O God (I prayed), come through
The cloud; hard task Thou settest man 
To know Thee; take me back again
To nothing, or make clear my view!-”
― Herman Melville, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land