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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

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
Earnest
Passive
Resistance
Persons
Person
Nothing
Aggravates

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O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
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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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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.
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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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Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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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 America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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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.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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Benevolent desires, after passing a certain point, can not undertake their own fulfillment without incurring the risk of evils beyond those sought to be remedied.
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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.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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