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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

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
Drown
Wells
Drowning
Human
Peril
Humans
Nevertheless
Well
Tremendous
Enough
Souls
Men
Sea
Extremities
Like
Causes
Extremity

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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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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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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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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.
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True places are not found on maps.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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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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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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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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Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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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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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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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.
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