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It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

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
Religion
Another
Feel
Feels
World
Ties
Fiction
Present

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Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
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We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
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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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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
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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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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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Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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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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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
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Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
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My means are sane, my motives and my object mad.
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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty things.
Herman Melville
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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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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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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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