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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?

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
Line
Lines
Tint
Nature
Violet
Ends
Orange
Rainbow
Draw
Begins
Draws

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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
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Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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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!
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
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As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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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.
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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.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.
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