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O Death, the Consecrator! Nothing so sanctifies a name As to be written--Dead. Nothing so wins a life from blame, So covers it from wrath and shame, As doth the burial-bed.

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
Names
Wrath
Winning
Wins
Death
Bed
Nothing
Shame
Sanctifies
Life
Blame
Sanctify
Dead
Burial
Name
Covers
Written
Doth

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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
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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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An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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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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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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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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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.
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To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
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Is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.
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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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Poor people make a very poor business of it when they try to seem rich.
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Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
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It is not down in any map true places never are.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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We die, because we live.
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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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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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