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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.

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
Battle
Sailor
Lost
Controls
Power
Globe
Like
Globes
Snorting
Mad
Steed
Mercy
Panting
Sea
Rider
Ocean
Riders

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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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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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Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
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Madman! Look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
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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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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
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Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
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Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.
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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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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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