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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.

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
Despised
Lazy
Compassion
Nobody
Land
Pusillanimous
Nothing
Heartily
Good
Bowels
Sailor

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Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!
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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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There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
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You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
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We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before the world is not yet middle-aged.
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Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.
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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.
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Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
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I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.
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The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
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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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Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
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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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You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
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Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
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When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
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A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.
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