Quote

It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it.

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
Fabric
Birds
Hover
Ships
Polar
Horrible
Cables
Blow
Blows
Bird
Woven
Wind
Texture
Prey

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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand-boy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.
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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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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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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
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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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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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The easiest way of life is the best.
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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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That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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