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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

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
Mortal
Mortals
Greatness
Ambition
Disease
Sure
Young

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All truth is profound.
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He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.
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True places are not found on maps.
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The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.
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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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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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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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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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Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
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No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair.
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Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
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Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.
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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
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It is not down in any map true places never are.
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