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

More quotes by Herman Melville

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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate-- Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.
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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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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
Herman Melville
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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
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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.
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In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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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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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
Herman Melville
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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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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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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 am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
Herman Melville
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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Herman Melville
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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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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
Herman Melville