Quote

beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.

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
Like
Chairs
Needed
Days
Beauty
Read
Constancy
Easy
Piety
Running
Tranquility
Cannot
Chair

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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
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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.
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
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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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The easiest way of life is the best.
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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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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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
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O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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