11 quotes
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
White-Jacket (1850)
Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.
White-Jacket (1850)
In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.
White-Jacket (1850)
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?
White-Jacket (1850)
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.
White-Jacket (1850)
Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues; the only one shared with us by the beasts of the field; the one most apt, by excess, to run into viciousness.
White-Jacket (1850)
Sailor or landsman, there is some sort of Cape Horn for all. Boys! beware of it; prepare for it in time. Greybeards! thank God it is passed.
White-Jacket (1850)
Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused. The privilege, inborn and inalienable, that every man has of dying himself, and inflicting death upon another, was not given to us without a purpose. These are the last resources of an insulted and unendurable existence.
White-Jacket (1850)
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)
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)
Though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.
White-Jacket (1850)