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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

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
Men
Blasphemy
Insulted
Strike
Strikes
Atheism
Sun
Doubt
Talk

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Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
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When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
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Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
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There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
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Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse,and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
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One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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We are only what we are not what we would be nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
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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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People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.
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