It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
HERMAN MELVILLEIt is not down in any map; true places never are.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
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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 -
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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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.
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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Failure is the test of greatness.
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Art is the objectification of feeling.
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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 -
Silence is the only Voice of our God.
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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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Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
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.
HERMAN MELVILLE