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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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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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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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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
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Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
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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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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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Let us only hate hatred and once give love a play, we will fall in love with a unicorn.
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
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Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
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See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
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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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Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
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O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
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