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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.

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
Till
Knowledge
Reason
Nothing
Thing
Never

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Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.
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It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle.
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
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An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
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Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
Herman Melville
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Book! You lie there the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
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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.
Herman Melville
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
Herman Melville
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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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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
Herman Melville
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
Herman Melville
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We die of too much life.
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The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
Herman Melville