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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.

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
Truth
Still
May
Sometimes
Thing
Incredible
True
Stills

More quotes by Herman Melville

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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
Herman Melville
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
Herman Melville
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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
Herman Melville
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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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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 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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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
Herman Melville
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Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
Herman Melville
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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman Melville
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
Herman Melville
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
Herman Melville
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Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
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.
Herman Melville
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
Herman Melville
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There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
Herman Melville
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
Herman Melville