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Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

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
Millions
Exposed
Though
Twenty
Better
Twenties
Secure
King
Oneself
Kings
Violence
Monarchs

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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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Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
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What like a bullet can undeceive!
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There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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There are hardly five critics in America and several of them are asleep.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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If there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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The idea of Jehovah was born here... Out of the rude elements of the insignificant thoughts thoughts that are in all men, they reared the transcendent conception of a God.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
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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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Tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor you, only dishonors himself.
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Silence is the only Voice of our God.
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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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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
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Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
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