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The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.

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
Entire
Names
Known
Read
Character
Demerits
Made
Sealed
Never
Merit
Men
Letters

More quotes by Herman Melville

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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Herman Melville
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
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...a man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville
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There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
Herman Melville
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The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
Herman Melville
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
Herman Melville
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
Herman Melville
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
Herman Melville
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
Herman Melville
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
Herman Melville
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Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
Herman Melville
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
Herman Melville
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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.
Herman Melville
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
Herman Melville
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
Herman Melville
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
Herman Melville