Quote

When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.

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
Take
Bloom
Deuces
Dogs
Strauss
Height
Arid
Dog
Acumen
Atheism
Heartily
Eye
Penetration
Wish
Rested
Barrenness
Spirit
Robbed
Deuce

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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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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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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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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
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It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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We are not a nation, so much as a world for unless we claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
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There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
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The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
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In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
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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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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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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?
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