Quote

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.

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
Though
Volume
Ever
Theme
Book
Endure
Many
Tried
Must
Produce
Flea
Great
Choose
Fleas
Writing
Written
Enduring
Literature
Mighty

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That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
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True places are not found on maps.
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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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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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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