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We cannot live for ourselves alone.

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
Alone
Cannot
Live

More quotes by Herman Melville

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You cannot hide the soul.
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That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
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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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
Herman Melville
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
Herman Melville
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
Herman Melville
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
Herman Melville
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Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
Herman Melville
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
Herman Melville
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The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
Herman Melville
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
Herman Melville
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Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
Herman Melville
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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
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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A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
Herman Melville