A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
HERMAN MELVILLEAll 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.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 -
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 MELVILLE -
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Failure is the test of greatness.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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






