"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
                                                                        – Herman Melville

About Herman Melville

American author Herman Melville is best known for his epic whaling novel, Moby-Dick, which wasn't recognized as a masterpiece until after his death. He was born in New York in 1819. At age 20, he went to sea on a whaling ship. His seafaring adventures included time with cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, the basis for his successful novel Typee. His later, more philosophical, novels were not as well received as his early adventure yarns, and he died in obscurity in 1891.