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For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

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
Peace
Ocean
Tahiti
Soul
Lies
Insular
Men
Joy
Encompassed
Life
Land
Appalling
Full
Surrounds
Known
Horrors
Lying
Surround
Half
Horror
Verdant

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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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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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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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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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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
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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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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
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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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Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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We cannot live for ourselves alone.
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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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