A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.
HERMAN MELVILLEA thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
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I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
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The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
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No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
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A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
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Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
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Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLE