Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLEA whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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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 -
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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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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Silence is the only Voice of our God.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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.
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Nature is nobody’s ally.
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 -
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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Failure is the test of greatness.
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE