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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
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
Light
Aloof
World
Hides
Courts
Gay
Misery
None
Court
Happiness
Deem
More quotes by Herman Melville
You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
Herman Melville
Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?
Herman Melville
It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Herman Melville
But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
Herman Melville
He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
Herman Melville
To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
Herman Melville
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
The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville
There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
Herman Melville
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
Herman Melville
Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
Herman Melville
To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Herman Melville
We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
Herman Melville
There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
Herman Melville
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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.
Herman Melville
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
Herman Melville
I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
Herman Melville
Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Herman Melville
