That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.
Herman MelvilleThat hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.
Herman MelvilleAll deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
Herman MelvilleAt banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.
Herman MelvilleThere is something in us, somehow, that, in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fanciedsuperiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves.
Herman Melville