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Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.

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
Makes
Daring
Oftenest
Men
Round
Seamen
Rounds
Braver
Thus
Cape
Brave
Capes
Danger
Horn
Goes
Horns
Less
Familiarity

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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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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world deaf to its voice and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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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's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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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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Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
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Book! You lie there the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
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O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
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Youth is immortal Tis the elderly only grow old!
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For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.
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A man of true science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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