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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.

Herman Melville

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Age Death Life Man Old Wake Up
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Compromise Edge Ragged Truth
Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Friendship Love Sight Truth
Thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and space.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Dumb Evolution Face Infinite Space Surface Talk Time
They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Dignity Leisure Life Success Talk Work
Truth is in things, and not in words.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Action One Liner Truth Word
All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Age Crack Life Lying Reality Round Sharp World
Only the man who says no is free
HERMAN MELVILLE

Freedom Man One Liner
A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Choice One Liner Smile Vehicle
For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Horror Life Ocean Surround
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Art Greatness Growth Known Life Master Old Wisdom Work
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Feeling Love Myself Nature Remote Sea
Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, – for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it – not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Mistake Set Sign Strength Talk Way Weakness
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Care Enterprise Method Order True
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Application Feeling Man Opinion Play Truth Universal
Stay true to the dreams of thy youth.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Dreams One Liner True Youth
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know the quality of what we have until it is gone?
HERMAN MELVILLE

Lost Moments Nature Ourselves Principal Rule State Value
Heaven have mercy on us all – Presbyterians and Pagans alike – for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Heaven Mercy Need Repair Sadness
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Gentle Hide Known Mystery Sea Soul Sweet Talk
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a snug sofa at last.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Charming Comfortable Empty Sadness Unknown
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Balloon Immortality Life Substantial
Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Accident Fame Merit One Liner
We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Below Further Future Hope Past Present Reach Scale
Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Break Forever Hope Loose Perish Soul Struggle
When the passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
HERMAN MELVILLE

Born Equality Freedom Legal Men Slave Writing
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Book Produce Theme
Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Beautiful Magic Reality Strength

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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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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