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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

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
First
Mediocrity
Children
Patriotic
Even
Excellence
Praise
Land
America
Best
Firsts
Praises

More quotes by Herman Melville

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There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.
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Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
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It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
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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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As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
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This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
Herman Melville
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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
Herman Melville
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville
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Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
Herman Melville
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
Herman Melville
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Silence is the only Voice of our God.
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Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
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There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville