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Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing

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
Humans
Thing
Feline
Oftentimes
Cunning
Madness
Human

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The friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
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Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
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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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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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As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.
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Surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man and it is first in point of occurrence for the wife comes after.
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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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In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
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In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.
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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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Will you, or will you not, quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
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God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates.
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It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
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There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.
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Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring. Thus with seamen: he who goes the oftenest round Cape Horn goes the most circumspectly.
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You cannot hide the soul.
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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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Man and boy, I have lived ever since I can remember.
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The world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original the only original author being God.
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Dollars damn me and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.
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