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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.

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
Stills
Still
Think
Thinking
Like
Uncharitable
Rattlesnake
Rattlesnakes
Prejudice

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True places are not found on maps.
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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 easiest way of life is the best.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
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The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
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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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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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What like a bullet can undeceive!
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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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beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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