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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.

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
World
Suggestions
Offered
Valuable
Lived
Personality
Days
Might
Made
Emerson

More quotes by Herman Melville

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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
Herman Melville
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
Herman Melville
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contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
Herman Melville
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
Herman Melville
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Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
Herman Melville
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
Herman Melville
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A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
Herman Melville
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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
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In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
Herman Melville
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
Herman Melville
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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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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
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Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville