Billy Budd Quotes by Herman Melville

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville Out of natural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers do not close. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville There is nothing namable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville "Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it." ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it. ~ Billy Budd by Herman Melville