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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
Equalled
Surpassed
Shakespeare
Sure
American
Born

More quotes by Herman Melville

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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.
Herman Melville
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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
Herman Melville
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How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
Herman Melville
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Herman Melville
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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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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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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
Herman Melville
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As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
Herman Melville
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There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
Herman Melville
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A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
Herman Melville
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When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
Herman Melville
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
Herman Melville
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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.
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
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
Herman Melville
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
Herman Melville
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
Herman Melville