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A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

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
Keep
Monk
True
Officers
Monastic
Self
Latter
Abnegation
Like
Obedience
Vows
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Officer
Duty
Vow
Military
Martial
Particular
Allegiance

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It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
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Immortality is but ubiquity in time.
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A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.
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Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
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Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.
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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
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A thing may be incredible and still be true sometimes it is incredible because it is true.
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I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)
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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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It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement.
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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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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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