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When a companion's heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing.

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
Heart
Overflows
Overflow
Companionship
Companion
Emotion
Best
Nothing

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How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.
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Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.
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I am, as I am whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.
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That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
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I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of- war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
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To be hated cordially, is only a left-handed compliment.
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In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend.
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The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
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But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
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You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
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To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.
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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
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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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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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