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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.

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
Point
Passings
Evil
Fulfillment
Remedied
Desires
Incurring
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Undertake
Certain
Passing
Benevolent
Without
Beyond
Conservatism
Risk
Evils
Politics
Sought

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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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It is not down in any map true places never are.
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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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Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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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.
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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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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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All truth is profound.
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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.
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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.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
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