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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

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
Ambiguities
Ambiguity
Vehicle
Chosen
Laughter
Smile
Joy
Happiness

More quotes by Herman Melville

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The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
Herman Melville
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
Herman Melville
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Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
Herman Melville
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
Herman Melville
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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville
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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
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
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Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
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It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
Herman Melville
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For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
Herman Melville
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
Herman Melville
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
Herman Melville
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
Herman Melville
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The lightning flashes through my skull mine eyeballs ache and ache my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.
Herman Melville
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
Herman Melville
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In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.
Herman Melville
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
Herman Melville
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Herman Melville