Quotes from book
Billy Budd, Sailor
Billy Budd, Sailor is the final novel by American writer Herman Melville, first published posthumously in London in 1924 as edited by Raymond M. Weaver, a professor at Columbia University. Other versions were later published. Melville had begun writing the original work in November 1888, but left it unfinished at his death in 1891. Acclaimed by British critics as a masterpiece when published in London, it quickly took its place as a classic literary work in the United States.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 23
“Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 19
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 25
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 30, Billy in the Darbies
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
This statement is usually attributed entirely to Melville, but the way he presents it in the story indicates that he might be quoting a lesser known author.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 24
“But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices?”
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.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 24
Context: Marvel not that having been made acquainted with the young sailor's essential innocence (an irruption of heretic thought hard to suppress) the worthy man lifted not a finger to avert the doom of such a martyr to martial discipline. So to do would not only have been as idle as invoking the desert, but would also have been an audacious transgression of the bounds of his function, one as exactly prescribed to him by military law as that of the boatswain or any other naval officer. Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War — Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why then is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 28
Context: 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 with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges...
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Context: 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.
“There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.”
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.
