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Herman Melville

Herman Melville Quotes

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Famous Herman Melville Quotes

“Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell's despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.”

LifeJoyGriefGods
Book:Moby Dick
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“Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm, and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when--There she blows!--the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.”

LifeEternityWhaling
Book:Moby-Dick or, The Whale
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“Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? 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. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, though canst never return!”

LifeSoulJoyPeaceTroubleSeaIsland
Book:Moby Dick
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“At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.”

KnowsLifeYearsWellsFeelingsCareLife IsCertainViewsConstitutionSentencesPoint Of ViewRidiculousCynicismIrrationalDispositionGood FeelingLife Is So Short
Book:Correspondence
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“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

LifeInspirationalMotivationalSuccessImaginationInspiringCreativityFailingFailureSucceedIndividualityIntuitionNovelistsLife ChangingBeing YourselfBeing SuccessfulFinding YourselfConformityOriginalitySuccessful PeopleImitationSuccess In LifeConformKey To SuccessFollow Your HeartRoad To SuccessRecipe For SuccessTrust YourselfBe True To YourselfBeing DifferentBeing MeGreat SuccessListen To Your HeartNonconformityJust Be YourselfMotivational SuccessListen To YourselfImagination And CreativityCreativenessTrying To SucceedFail To SucceedInspire And MotivateImitation Of Life
Book:Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
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“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”

KnowsLifeArtAgeTimeGrowsDifficultKnow HowMastersAgingOld AgeBirthdayChaptersOld PeopleGreat ArtGrowing OldAgeingOld LadyArt Of Living50th BirthdayFunny AgingBirthdays And AgingFunny Old Age BirthdayYouth And Old AgeAge And YouthInspirational BirthdaySenior CitizenFunny AgeStaying YoungInspirational AgeQuotations Birthday Happy BirthdayAge And WisdomYouth FunnyAging And Wisdom
Author:Herman Melville
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