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Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Herman Melville

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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Life
Longer
Like
Age
Less
Death
Wakeful
Looks
Aught
Always
Insomnia
Men
Linked
Time
Youth

More quotes by Herman Melville

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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
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The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
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All truth is profound.
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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.
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The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
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I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
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No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
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Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
Herman Melville
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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