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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

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
Often
Money
Interferes
Men
Propensity
Benevolence
Interfere
Charity
Animal
Making

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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
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Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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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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Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
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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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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.
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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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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
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All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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