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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.

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
Hell
Roll
Heart
Fishes
Boat
Stab
Thou
Whale
Thee
Whales
Rivers
Lakes
Towards
Fishing
Sea
Destroying

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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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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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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 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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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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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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All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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Nature is nobody's ally.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.
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Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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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.
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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
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For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who believe and tremble has one.
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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.
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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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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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