The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
HERMAN MELVILLEThink not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
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 -
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 -
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A man of true science… thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
The eyes are the gateway to the soul.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Thinking 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 MELVILLE -
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
HERMAN MELVILLE -
You know nothing till you know all; which is the reason we never know any thing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
You cannot hide the soul.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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 MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
HERMAN MELVILLE