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Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

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
Unsuitable
Picnics
Rank
Arbitrary
Liberal
Catholic
Mind
Men

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In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
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There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.
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There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
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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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truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
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Let me look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better than to gaze upon God.
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Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
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There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.
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It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
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Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
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Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.
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In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
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Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.
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contempt is as frequently produced at first sight as love.
Herman Melville
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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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A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
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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 man of true science uses few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose Where as the smatterer in science...thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
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A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing
Herman Melville