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We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

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
Would
Scales
Perfection
Step
Steps
Humanity
Hope
Thing
Reaches
Every
Scale

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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.
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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
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There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
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Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
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No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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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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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
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Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.
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