“But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices?”

— Herman Melville , book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 2
Context: 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.

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Herman Melville 144

American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet 1818–1891

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