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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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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
Opinion
Feeling
Upon
Mischief
Feelings
Insist
Truth
Application
Play
Temporary
Men
Plays
Universal

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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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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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All truth is profound.
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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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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
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Let us only hate hatred and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
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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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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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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.
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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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