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 MELVILLEIf you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
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Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
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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.
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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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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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A thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
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It is not down in any map; true places never are.
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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.
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
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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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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world…. We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
HERMAN MELVILLE