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It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.

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
Never
Somewhere
Men
Greatness
Succeed
Originality
Failure
Imitation
Failing
Failed
True
Test
Better
Tests
Great
Fail

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Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?
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We die of too much life.
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Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.
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O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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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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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.
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Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.
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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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There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
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Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
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But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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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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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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The lightning flashes through my skull mine eyeballs ache and ache my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.
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