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.
HERMAN MELVILLEThou 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.
HERMAN MELVILLEA smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLEYou cannot hide the soul.
HERMAN MELVILLEMeditation and water are wedded for ever.
HERMAN MELVILLEHe who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
HERMAN MELVILLEThinking 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 MELVILLEIf you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
HERMAN MELVILLEAll 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.
HERMAN MELVILLEThe most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
HERMAN MELVILLEArt is the objectification of feeling.
HERMAN MELVILLEOld age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
HERMAN MELVILLETis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
HERMAN MELVILLEOne of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
HERMAN MELVILLEIn a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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.
HERMAN MELVILLEIs there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
HERMAN MELVILLE