Quote

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

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
Mountain
Rush
Gorges
Path
Laid
Swerve
Purpose
Mountains
Rails
Running
Iron
Naught
Soul
Obstacles
Beds
Heart
Fixed
Rail
Unerringly
Way
Bed
Obstacle
Torrents
Hearts
Angle
Whereon

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What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred Saturnians through life's Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.
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There are hardly five critics in America and several of them are asleep.
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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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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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Are not half our lives spent in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of which we were wholly ignorant at the time?
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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Much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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What like a bullet can undeceive!
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