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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

Herman Melville

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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Relative
Judge
Judging
Depends
Beauty
Whether
Upon
Hideous
Made
Handsome

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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
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What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?
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In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?
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What like a bullet can undeceive!
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.
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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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