Quote #55
Billy's agony, mainly proceeding from a generous young heart's virgin experience of the diabolical incarnate and effective in some men-the tension of that agony was over now.
More from Herman Melville
- If possible, not to let the men so much as surmise that their officers anticipate aught amiss from them is the tacit rule in a military shi…
- Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor's essential innocence (an irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress) …
- 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…
- At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these-'God bless Captain Vere!'
- 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. I…
- The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than…
- In the light of that martial code whereby it was formally to be judged, innocence and guilt personified in Claggart and Budd in effect chan…
- But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, ar…