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Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?

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
Gone
Nature
States
Never
Principal
Quality
Literature

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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
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Failure is the test of greatness.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped.
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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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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 may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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In armies, navies, cities, or families, in nature herself, nothing more relaxes good order than misery.
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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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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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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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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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Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
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Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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