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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
Sure
Young
Mortal
Mortals
Greatness
Ambition
Disease

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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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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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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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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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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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As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.
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He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
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I am past scorching not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.
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Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.
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Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.
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Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
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Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
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Think of it. To go down to posterity as a 'man who lived among the cannibals.'
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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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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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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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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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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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I could...see in Emerson...that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.
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