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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

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
Better
Sober
Human
Sea
Humans
South
Much
Afraid
Men
Sleep
Christian
Cannibal
Fear
Drunken
Reason
Heathen

More quotes by Herman Melville

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A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
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It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
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The easiest way of life is the best.
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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.
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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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
Herman Melville
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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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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman Melville
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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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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
Herman Melville
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all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
Herman Melville
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Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
Herman Melville
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
Herman Melville
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
Herman Melville
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Herman Melville
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville