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Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

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
Always
Insomnia
Men
Linked
Youth
Time
Longer
Life
Age
Like
Less
Death
Wakeful
Looks
Aught

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Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
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Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
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Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
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There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
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Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
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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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There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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Let us only hate hatred and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
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