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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.

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
Much
Claim
Like
Claims
World
Unless
Nation
Nations
Father
Mother
Without
Sire

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Youth is the time when hearts are large.
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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
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To the last, I grapple with thee From Hell's heart, I stab at thee For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
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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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Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
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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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And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.
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What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred Saturnians through life's Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.
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Thou wine art the friend of the friendless, though a foe to all.
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beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.
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We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.
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But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale... from hell's heart I stab at thee.
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If you are poor, avoid wine as a costly luxury if you are rich, shun it as a fatal indulgence. Stick to plain water.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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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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When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
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The Past is the textbook of tyrants the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
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