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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.

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
Wealth
Rich
Poor
Business
Seems
Trying
Make
Deception
People
Seem

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In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.
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Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.
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But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
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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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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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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
Herman Melville
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When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
Herman Melville
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If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
Herman Melville
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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
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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.
Herman Melville