{
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/you-speak-of-a-certain",
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  "text": "You speak of a certain philosophy, and a more or less occult one it may be, and hint of its bearing upon practical life; pray, tell me, if the study of this philosophy tends to the same formation of character with the experiences of the world?\"\n\n\"It does; and that is the test of its truth; for any philosophy that, being in operation contradictory to the ways of the world, tends to produce a character at odds with it, such a philosophy must necessarily be but a cheat and a dream.\"",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Herman Melville",
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  "book": {
    "title": "The Confidence-Man",
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    {
      "name": "philosophy",
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:55:34",
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      "slug": "the-mind-is-ductile",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/the-mind-is-ductile",
      "text": "The mind is ductile, very much so: but images, ductilely received into it, need a certain time to harden and bake in their impressions, otherwise such a casualty as I speak of will in an instant obliterate them, as though they had never been. We are but clay, sir, potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and too-yielding clay.",
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    {
      "id": "ef22a327-61e2-4ee4-82ab-d77dff429830",
      "slug": "to-be-full",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/to-be-full",
      "text": "To be full of warm, earnest words, and heart-felt protestations, is to create a scene; and well-bred people dislike few things more than that; which would seem to look as if the world did not relish earnestness; but, not so; because the world, being earnest itself, likes an earnest scene, and an earnest man, very well, but only in their place — the stage.",
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      "topics": [
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          "name": "honesty",
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    {
      "id": "c6c6e4fc-172c-4f62-a64f-9dfd59bb8c03",
      "slug": "you-have-hearkened",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/you-have-hearkened",
      "text": "You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank, from putting yourself?",
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