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Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

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
Love
Special
Selfish
Quite
Burning
Dictated
Less
Glory
Considerations
Sense
Duty
Excessive
Firsts
Military
Prudence
First
Personal
Consideration
Even
Honest
Surely
Men
Virtue
Impulse

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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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flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.
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Truth is in things, and not in words.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
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For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants . . .
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for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men
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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.
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Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.
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It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.
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Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine setting an eminent example to all mankind.
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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
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