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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
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Prefer
Would

More quotes by Herman Melville

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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
Herman Melville
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
Herman Melville
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Herman Melville
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Herman Melville
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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Herman Melville
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
Herman Melville
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
Herman Melville
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Silence is the only Voice of our God.
Herman Melville
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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
Herman Melville
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
Herman Melville
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
Herman Melville
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Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
Herman Melville
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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
Herman Melville
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The easiest way of life is the best.
Herman Melville
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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.
Herman Melville
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Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
Herman Melville
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
Herman Melville
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
Herman Melville
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
Herman Melville