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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.

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
Politics
Trimming
Keep
Impartiality
Political
Partisan
Truth
Partisans
Seems
Patriotism
Cloistered
Together
Argument
Narrowness
Reason
Intellectual
Serviceable
Cause
Confounded

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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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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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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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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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People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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True places are not found on maps.
Herman Melville