A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Interpretation
Experiences outside of formal education can be just as valuable, if not more so.
In this quote, Herman Melville emphasizes that the lessons learned through real-life experiences, such as those encountered at sea on a whale ship, are as significant as traditional academic education gained at prestigious institutions like Yale or Harvard. He suggests that practical knowledge and adventure can provide invaluable insights that can shape one's understanding of the world.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of real-world experiences alongside formal education.
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.
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
We found that process praise predicted the child's mindset and desire for challenge five years later.
I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being.
A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.
To this generation I would say: Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
Meek young men grow up in libraries.
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