Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
HERMAN MELVILLEYet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
More Herman Melville Quotes
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A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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Aid my disillusionment, my friend!
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Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
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Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?
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The eyes are the gateway to the soul.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
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A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.
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Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
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They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
HERMAN MELVILLE