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There are hardly five critics in America and several of them are asleep.

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
Asleep
Hardly
Several
Critics
Five
America

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Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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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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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
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We die of too much life.
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
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An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman Melville
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O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.
Herman Melville
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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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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Herman Melville
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
Herman Melville
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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