Famous Quotes | Life is a long Dardenelles, My...

Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last—but swoop! we launch into the great sea! Yet the geographers say, even then we must not despair, because across the great sea, however desolate & vacant it may look, lie all Persia & the delicious lands roundabout Damascus. - Herman Melville
Attribution: Herman Melville (1819–1891), U.S. author. letter, Jan. 8, 1852, to Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. Correspondence, vol. 14, The Writings of Herman Melville, ed. Lynn Horth (1993).

Categories: Author, Frustration, Immortality, Life

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