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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

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
Writing
Safer
Men
Bound
Bounds
Rate
Criticism
Brain
Better
Calf
Book
Calves

More quotes by Herman Melville

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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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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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Failure is the test of greatness.
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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.
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Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
Herman Melville
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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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.
Herman Melville
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
Herman Melville
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No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
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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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
Herman Melville
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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
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville
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The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
Herman Melville
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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
Herman Melville
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
Herman Melville