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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.

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
Civilization
Tribes
Among
Plain
Brother
Mountains
Freedom
Enlightened
Born
Equality
Pinions
Ever
Wild
Nestled
Different
Wings
Sheltered
People
Mountain
Barbarous

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The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
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As with ships, so with men he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
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Silence is the only Voice of our God.
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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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Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
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I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, no matter how comical.
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There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear - the city of London and the South Seas.
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In childhood, death stirred me not in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on.
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Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
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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.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.
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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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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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Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues.
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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Failure is the test of greatness.
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It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.
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If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.
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