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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

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
Emotion
Tracing
Life
Analytical
Defy
Precise
Strongest
Subtle
Insight
Emotions
Causation

More quotes by 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.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
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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.
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Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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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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It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
Herman Melville
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
Herman Melville
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
Herman Melville
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
Herman Melville
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That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.
Herman Melville
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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville