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The shadows of things are greater than themselves and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance.

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
Shadow
Greater
Things
Exaggerated
Shadows
Unlike
Substance

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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
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Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
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I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
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Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
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This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
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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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At length I fell asleep, with the volume in my hand and never slept so sound before
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Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.
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Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
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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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Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
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For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
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We die of too much life.
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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him.
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All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.
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It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
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