Truth is in things, and not in words.
HERMAN MELVILLEI do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Failure is the true test of greatness
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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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A man of true science… thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
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As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 -
Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Only the man who says no is free
HERMAN MELVILLE