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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.

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
Things
Egotistical
Lofty
Towers
Climbing
Grand
Mountain
Ever
Something
Tops

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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?
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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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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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia.
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Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
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The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
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No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
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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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Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.
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All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.
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Some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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