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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.

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
Deal
Second
Deals
Causes
Wholly
Action
Treat
Human
Treats
Humans
Deeds
Actions

More quotes by Herman Melville

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Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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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.)
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It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
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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.
Herman Melville
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
Herman Melville
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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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Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
Herman Melville
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He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
Herman Melville
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We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
Herman Melville
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Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
Herman Melville
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
Herman Melville
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Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
Herman Melville
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O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.
Herman Melville
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville
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When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Herman Melville
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One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
Herman Melville
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
Herman Melville
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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
Herman Melville
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Herman Melville