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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
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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Mercy
Mending
Head
Dreadfully
Heaven
Presbyterians
Need
Pagan
Needs
Sadly
Cracked
Alike
Somehow
Pagans
More quotes by Herman Melville
Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
Herman Melville
There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
Herman Melville
At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.
Herman Melville
Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.
Herman Melville
Nature is nobody's ally.
Herman Melville
The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Herman Melville
Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
Herman Melville
There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
Herman Melville
The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
Herman Melville
Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Herman Melville
There are hardly five critics in America and several of them are asleep.
Herman Melville
contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
Herman Melville
It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
Herman Melville
Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
Herman Melville
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
Herman Melville
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Herman Melville
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
Herman Melville
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
Herman Melville
Failure is the test of greatness.
Herman Melville
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
Herman Melville