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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.

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
Fact
Words
Facts
Bare
Give
Supply
Book
Places
Come
Thoughts
Must
Books
Giving
Lying

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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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Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
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For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
Herman Melville
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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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Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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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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Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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Evil is the chronic malady of the universe, and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
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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 is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
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