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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.

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
Look
Human
Gaze
Humans
God
Looks
Sky
Sea
Upon
Eye
Better

More quotes by Herman Melville

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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
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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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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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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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Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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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.
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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
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
Herman Melville
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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
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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
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
Herman Melville
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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
Herman Melville
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The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Herman Melville
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It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
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Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
Herman Melville