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Nature is nobody's ally.

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
Allies
Nobody
Nature
Ally

More quotes by Herman Melville

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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
Herman Melville
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville
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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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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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You cannot hide the soul.
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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Truth is in things, and not in words.
Herman Melville
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
Herman Melville
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Herman Melville
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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
Herman Melville
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
Herman Melville
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
Herman Melville
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
Herman Melville
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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.
Herman Melville
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all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
Herman Melville
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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
Herman Melville
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville