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I would prefer not to.

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
Ego
Prefer
Would

More quotes by Herman Melville

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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
Herman Melville
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville
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...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
Herman Melville
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
Herman Melville
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
Herman Melville
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
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We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
Herman Melville
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It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
Herman Melville
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The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
Herman Melville
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
Herman Melville
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville
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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Herman Melville
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In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
Herman Melville
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville
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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
Herman Melville
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You cannot hide the soul.
Herman Melville
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The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
Herman Melville
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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.)
Herman Melville