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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.

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
Virtue
Common
Vulgar
Virtues
Courage

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All truth is profound.
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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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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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There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
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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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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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A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
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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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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
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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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A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
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Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
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In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.
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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll and much we discover, is not worth the discovering.
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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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There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.
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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.
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