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There are hardly five critics in America and several of them are asleep.

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
America
Asleep
Hardly
Several
Critics
Five

More quotes by Herman Melville

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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
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In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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We die of too much life.
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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.
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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
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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.
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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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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
Herman Melville
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Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?
Herman Melville
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
Herman Melville
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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
Herman Melville
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
Herman Melville
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
Herman Melville
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
Herman Melville