The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
HERMAN MELVILLEWhen the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
More Herman Melville Quotes
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
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My body is but the lees of my better being.
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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.
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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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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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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 -
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
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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 -
Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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Only the man who says no is free
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A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
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He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world…. We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
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We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
HERMAN MELVILLE -
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.
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Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.
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The eyes are the gateway to the soul.
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Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
HERMAN MELVILLE