When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.
HERMAN MELVILLETo produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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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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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 MELVILLE -
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
You cannot hide the soul.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
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Ignorance is the parent of fear.
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You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
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.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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A man of true science… thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Failure is the test of greatness.
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Only the man who says no is free
HERMAN MELVILLE -
When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
HERMAN MELVILLE