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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
Hope
Thing
Reaches
Every
Scale
Would
Scales
Perfection
Step
Steps
Humanity

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I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
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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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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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Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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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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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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Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
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All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
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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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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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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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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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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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