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Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville ( 1819 - 1891 ) was born in New York. He was the son of a merchant. His father died when he was only twelve. In 1841 Melville shipped on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the South Seas. Next year he deserted ship in the Marquesas and sailed further on the Pacific. In 1844 he returned as a US Navy sailor in the frigate United States. Many of his literary works capture the mistery of isolated islands, the redoubtable soul of sea creatures and the madness of the American upper - class white man fighting Natives and Nature alike. .

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But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

– Herman Melville

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A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

– Herman Melville

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Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.

– Herman Melville

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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

– 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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He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man can not be great.

– Herman Melville

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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

– Herman Melville

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The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.

– 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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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

– 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 cozy, loving pair.

– Herman Melville

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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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I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling.

– Herman Melville

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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

– Herman Melville

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Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

– Herman Melville

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Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, --for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it -- not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

– Herman Melville

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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes the whole universe for a vast practical joke.

– Herman Melville

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There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.

– Herman Melville

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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

– Herman Melville

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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

– Herman Melville

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Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity.

– Herman Melville

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