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"With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it."
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"Stupidity has a knack for getting its way."
"So unsirious work... I behave nice because I want people to behave in the same way with me."
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Explore more quotes by Herman Melville
"To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."
"Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own."
"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath..."
"Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?"
"Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."
"Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat."
"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are."
"At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous."
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