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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

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
Misery
None
Court
Happiness
Deem
Light
Aloof
World
Hides
Courts
Gay

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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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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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What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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Book! You lie there the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
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But I shall follow the endless, winding way, — the flowing river in the cave of man careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.
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He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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True places are not found on maps.
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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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