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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

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
Literature
Talk
Write
Helplessly
Without
Apparently
Writing
Throwing
Oneself
Impossible
Open

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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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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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I would prefer not to.
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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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No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
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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.
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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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At banquets surfeit not, but fill partake, and retire and eat not again till you crave.
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
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All truth is profound.
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Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
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Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
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