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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

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
Best
Firsts
Praises
First
Mediocrity
Children
Patriotic
Even
Excellence
Praise
Land
America

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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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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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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
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Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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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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Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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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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All truth is profound.
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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
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No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
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Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
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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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Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
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It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
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