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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
Liberal
Catholic
Mind
Men
Unsuitable
Picnics
Rank
Arbitrary

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You cannot hide the soul.
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All Profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence.
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All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.
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To be called one thing, is oftentimes to be another.
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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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Praise when merited is not a boon: yet to a generous nature, is it pleasant to utter it.
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Our souls belong to our bodies, not our bodies to our souls.
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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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We die, because we live.
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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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What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
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Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true places never are.
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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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Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
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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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I never fancied broiling fowls - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.
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I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it and irresponsibility but without licentious inclination.
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The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind but not the march of Love.
Herman Melville
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He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
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Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.
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