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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.

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
Given
Bows
Baying
Three
Breeze
Royals
Together
Swings
Hound
Like
Royal
Coral
Follows
Hounds
Hung
Anchor
Sea
Anchors
Courses
Sailing

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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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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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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
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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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Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.
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The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.
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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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Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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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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