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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?

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
Think
Peace
Reward
Thinking
Part
Corner
People
Come
Corners
Done
Rewards
Hard
Hardest
Undergone
Work
Deserve
Comfortably
Good
Food
Supper
Men
Possible
Hardship

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Failure is the test of greatness.
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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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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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
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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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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
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He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.
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All truth is profound.
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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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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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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
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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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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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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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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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The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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