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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

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
World
Chosen
People
Bear
Israel
Bears
Americans
Democracy
Ark
Liberty
Liberties
Time
Peculiar

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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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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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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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The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.
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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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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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The entire merit of a man can never be made known nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We are only known by our names as letters sealed up, we but read each other's superscriptions.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
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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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I would prefer not to.
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What man who carries a heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul?
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He who goes oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
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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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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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