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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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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
Time
Taken
Knowledge
Easy
Else
Thought
Stranger
May
Dear
Self
Somebody
Things
Happened

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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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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.
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Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
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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.
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Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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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.
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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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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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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.
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.
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