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

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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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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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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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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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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.
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The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
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For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who believe and tremble has one.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not barrenly abate-- Stimulants to the power mature, Preparatives of fate.
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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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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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