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Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; and so ...
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter. To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram -- lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull -- he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins -- that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path -- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales -- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes the whole universe for a vast practical joke.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practica...
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Herman Melville
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Toward the accomplishment of an aim, which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement, sagacious and sound. These men are madmen, and of the most dangerous sort.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
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Herman Melville
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Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
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Herman Melville
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They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. The dignity is in leisure.
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Herman Melville
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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
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Herman Melville
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The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.
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Herman Melville
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Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man can not be great.
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Herman Melville
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Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
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Herman Melville
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Herman Melville
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shores our bed and eats at our own table.
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Herman Melville
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How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg -- a cozy, loving pair.
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Herman Melville
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Through the port comes the moon-shine astray! It tips the guard's cutlass and silvers this nook;...
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Herman Melville
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From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it.
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Herman Melville
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Were this world an endless pain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage.
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Herman Melville
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However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever...
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Herman Melville
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In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads th...
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Herman Melville
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