It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
HERMAN MELVILLEA whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
More Herman Melville Quotes
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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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Yet habit – strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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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.
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Failure is the true test of greatness
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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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He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
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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.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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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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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
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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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A man of true science… thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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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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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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Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
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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.
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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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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, – for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it – not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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Art is the objectification of feeling.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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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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Failure is the test of greatness.
HERMAN MELVILLE