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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
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
Running
Swerve
Soul
Rails
Rail
Laid
Iron
Fixed
Path
Whereon
Purpose
Gorges
More quotes by Herman Melville
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
Herman Melville
Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
Herman Melville
I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
Herman Melville
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
Herman Melville
Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
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
We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
Herman Melville
Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
Herman Melville
Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
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
When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
Herman Melville
You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
Herman Melville
Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
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
He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
Herman Melville
Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Herman Melville
There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
Herman Melville
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Herman Melville
