Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shorless seas. The good Mate said, Now we must pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say? Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! and on! My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak! The stout Mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wavewashed his swarthy cheek. What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn? Why, you shall say at break of day, 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!' They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the Mate; This mad sea shows its teeth tonight. He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Admiral, say but one good word; What shall we do when hope is gone? The words leapt like a leaping sword; Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on! Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck And peered through darkness. Ah! that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck -- A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its greatest lesson: On! sail on!

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The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.

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Must, bid the Morn awake! Sad Winter now declines, Each bird doth choose a mate; This day's Saint Valentine's. For that good bishop's sake Get up and let us see What beauty it shall be That Fortune us assigns.

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Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.

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Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

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Paradoxically, all these wonderful dimensions that we want for our being are completely missing, being a hope, a dream about the perfection of the being. Then this hope and dream of perfection is materialized in the vision we have on our soul mate. Moreover, if we are under the impression that we know what we would want as perfection, it always remains a mere false impression and nothing more, because then the event of a Great Love occurs, we realize that what we thought to be perfection is false, and the novelty of the new imagine on the perfection embodies by the lover makes us feel that intense feeling of suffocating love, precisely because we find our new standard for perfection, which becomes this way superior to the old one.

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It may be that the ignorant man, alone, Has any chance to mate his life with life...

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He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate.

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Despite everything I've achieved in my life, the culinary awards, the military commendations, the honorary degrees, I have never, ever lost sight of what's truly important. The thing that gives meaning to these triumphs. Someone to share them with. A companion. A help mate. A wife.

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If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.

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Friends will keep you sane, Love could fill your heart, A lover can warm your bed, But lonely is the soul without a mate.

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Being plied with fine food always puts me in mind of the slammer, cause the food was jumpin' in there too--high in fat but nice and salty. You know what the worst deprivation in there was My music. Radio belonged to my cell mate, the Blonde Hammer. He was into that jazz-fusion thing at the time. I tell you what, enough Spyro Gyra and you're hoping you'll get killed in a knife fight.

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He's so fat, he can be his own running mate.

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Jack You need to find yourself a girl mate. Or perhaps the reason you practice three hours a day is that you already found one, and are otherwise incapable of wooing said strumpet. You're not a eunuch are you

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For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

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Try to take for a mate a person of your own neighborhood.

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Of Consciousness, her awful Mate. The Soul cannot be rid -- as easy the secreting her behind the Eyes of God.

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What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?

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Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

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To have some idea what it's like, stand in the outside lane of a motorway, get your mate to drive his car at you at 95 mph and wait until he's 12 yards away, before you decide which way to jump.

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I must be the mate of the man I had chosen; and if he would not come to my level, I must go to his.

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'... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.'

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Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes...

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The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.

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Talk about meeting your soul mate, ... I truly feel I have been given that gift. And believe me, I wasn't some lightweight package. I'm, like, the package that didn't just come with luggage -- I had trunks.

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Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.

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It is well within the order of things that man should listen when his mate sings; but the true male never yet walked who liked to listen when his mate talked.

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Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.

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When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.

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Isaiah 34:16:
Look in the scroll of the LORD and read: None of these will be missing, not one will lack her mate. For it is his mouth that has given the order, and his Spirit will gather them together.
(NIV)
Seek out of the book of the Lord and read: not one of these [details of prophecy] shall fail, none shall want and lack her mate [in fulfillment]. For the mouth [of the Lord] has commanded, and His Spirit has gathered them.
(AMP)
Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.
(KJV)

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