“Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.”
Quote by Herman Melville
“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”
Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
“A ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.”
Source: The Complete Novels of Herman Melville: Sea Tales, Maritime Adventures & Philosophical Novels: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man & Billy Budd, Sailor
“At banquets surfeit not, but fill; partake, and retire; and eat not again till you crave.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.”
Source: Mardi: And a Voyage Thither
“One would like to know, what were foes made for except to be used?”
Source: Pierre; or The Ambiguities
“I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.”
“As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.”
Source: Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile
“flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.”
Source: Billy Budd and Other Tales