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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.

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
Laughter
Laugh
Laughing
Joy
Happiness
Rather
Laughable
Thing
Scarce
Good
Mighty

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One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
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Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
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contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
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It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.
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This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.
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Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
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Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite and so they are as airy bridges, by which ourfurther shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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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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The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
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Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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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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Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
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