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The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run

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
Soul
Rails
Rail
Laid
Iron
Fixed
Path
Whereon
Purpose
Gorges
Running
Swerve

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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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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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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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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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An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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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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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.
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In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
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