Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
Interpretation
True creativity often stems from hard work and introspection.
In this quote, Herman Melville suggests that the lines of wisdom and understanding are shaped not by mere chance but rather by the struggles and efforts of individuals, symbolized by the 'furrowed brow.' This indicates that deep thought, experience, and labor contribute to one's insights and the depth of one's character, emphasizing the idea that wisdom is earned through life's challenges.
In practice
A speaker at a graduation ceremony might use this quote to emphasize the importance of perseverance in achieving success.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
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.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.
I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature.
I happen to be extremely left-brained; my instinct is to draw a chart rather than a picture. I'm trying to get my right-brain muscles into shape. I actually think this shift toward right-brain abilities has the potential to make us both better off and better in a deeper sense.
I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do.
We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad.
Anger is energising. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward.
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