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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.

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
Object
Objects
Means
Mean
Motives
Insanity
Sane
Motive
Mad

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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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If not against us, nature is not for us.
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
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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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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.
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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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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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I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
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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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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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I would prefer not to.
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The easiest way of life is the best.
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
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