“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.”

— Herman Melville

Ahab to Starbuck, in Ch. 36 : The Quarter-Deck
Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851)
Context: All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.

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Herman Melville 144

American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet 1818–1891

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“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.”

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