They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLETruth is in things, and not in words.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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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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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.
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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.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
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A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.
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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.
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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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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
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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.
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I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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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.
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What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?
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No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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There’s magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
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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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Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
HERMAN MELVILLE