Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its … - Herman Melville

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You can shut down a service, and yet people will find ways to communicate.

Herman Melville

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup.

Beggars, Circumstances, Mean, Passion, Power, War

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Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle-a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

Aside, Higher, Mere, Spiritual, Sweet, Wise

And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Enkindling, Eye, Fog, Infidel, Men, Mists

Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

Nothing, Religion, Say, Speak, Women

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.

Cast, Independence, Sea, Soul, Thinking, Wind

Truth is in things, and not in words.

Things, Truth, Truth Is, Words