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Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

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
Noble
Sparkling
Ideals
Robes
Creatures
Glowing
Mankind
Grand
Running
Creature
Men
Ideal
Costliest
Fellows
Ignominious
Throw
Blemish

More quotes by Herman Melville

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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.
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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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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
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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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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
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Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
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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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Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.
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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.
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There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
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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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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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One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
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