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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

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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
American
Born
Equalled
Surpassed
Shakespeare
Sure

More quotes by 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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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
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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.
Herman Melville
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
Herman Melville
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
Herman Melville
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
Herman Melville
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Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
Herman Melville
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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
Herman Melville
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
Herman Melville
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
Herman Melville
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Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
Herman Melville
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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
Herman Melville
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
Herman Melville
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True places are not found on maps.
Herman Melville
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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
Herman Melville
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Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Herman Melville
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Herman Melville
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
Herman Melville