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The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

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
Future
Solely
Free
Tyrants
Past
Incapable
Bible
Crystallized
Like
Stand
Textbook
Wife
Textbooks
Forever
Backward
Looking
Governed

More quotes by Herman Melville

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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
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Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
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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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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
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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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Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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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.
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There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered be a cause not partisan.
Herman Melville
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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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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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
Herman Melville
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Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
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All truth is profound.
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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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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I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
Herman Melville