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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

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
Infidelity
Vote
Dead
True
Live
Men

More quotes by Herman Melville

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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
Herman Melville
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
Herman Melville
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Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
Herman Melville
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
Herman Melville
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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville
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It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
Herman Melville
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I would prefer not to.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
Herman Melville
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
Herman Melville
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
Herman Melville
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Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
Herman Melville