"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
— Herman Melville

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesHumanistsPeople from New York CityPhilosophical pessimists
Original Language: English

Sources

Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855) :