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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

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
Pity
Pain
Seldom
Sensitive

More quotes by Herman Melville

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If not against us, nature is not for us.
Herman Melville
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Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
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Let us only hate hatred and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
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Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
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.
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
Herman Melville
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The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
Herman Melville
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
Herman Melville
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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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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.
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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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
Herman Melville
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He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.
Herman Melville
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Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
Herman Melville
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
Herman Melville