89 quotes
In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court — on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General — follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.
Billy Budd, Sailor (1891)
If they can get here, they have God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China.
Redburn (1849)
Says a writer whom few know, "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to act."
Billy Budd, Sailor (1891)
Ah, might we read in America’s signs
The Age restored of the Antonines.
Timoleon (1891)
And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, — what will compare with it?
Moby Dick (1851)
It was not a very white jacket, but white enough, in all conscience, as the sequel will show.
The way I came by it was this...
White-Jacket (1850)
Their tawny features, all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works.
All dies! and not alone
The aspiring trees and men and grass;
The poets’ forms of beauty pass,
And noblest deeds they are undone,
Even truth itself decays, and lo,
From truth’s sad ashes pain and falsehood grow.
One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)
There is no faith, and no stoicism, and no philosophy, that a mortal man can possibly evoke, which will stand the final test of a real impassioned onset of Life and Passion upon him. . . . Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)
"I would prefer not to." (A line spoken repeatedly by Bartleby)
Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
The poor old Past,
The Future's slave,
She drudged through pain and crime
To bring about the blissful Prime,
Then — perished. There's a grave!
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous — a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!
Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
A man of true science...uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.
White-Jacket (1850)
The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)
Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the act of smoking. How captivating is a Peruvian lady, swinging in her gaily-woven hammock of grass, extended between two orange-trees, and inhaling the fragrance of a choice cigarro!
Typee (1846)
But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.
Billy Budd, Sailor (1891)
In the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect changed places. In a legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought to victimize a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the latter, navally regarded, constituted the most heinous of military crimes.
Billy Budd, Sailor (1891)
What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)
In bas-relief he late has shown
A horrible show, agreed—
Megalosaurus, iguanodon,
Palaeotherium Glypthaecon,
A Barnum-show raree