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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

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
Infinitely
Beast
Folly
Madness
Earth
Men
Outdone

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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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But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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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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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
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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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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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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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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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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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O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
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