Quote

For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .

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
Girl
Welcome
Sprouts
Home
Red
Oaks
May
Woods
April
Even
Glad
Thunder
Cheeked
Dancing
Hearted
Cloven
Girls
Trip
Barest
Green
Send
Wintry
Least
Forth
Misanthropic

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All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
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None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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We die, because we live.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
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It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
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The profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself for indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelop of the storm, and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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