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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.

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
Joy
Happiness
Rather
Laughable
Thing
Scarce
Good
Mighty
Laughter
Laugh
Laughing

More quotes by Herman Melville

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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
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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.
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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.
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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
Herman Melville
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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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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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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.
Herman Melville
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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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It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
Herman Melville
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
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But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.
Herman Melville
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Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
Herman Melville
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
Herman Melville
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
Herman Melville