Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile

“A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed. The ocean brims with natural griefs and tragedies; and into that watery immensity of terror, man's private grief is lost like a drop.””

— Herman Melville

“Best followed now is this life, by hurrying, like itself, to a close.Few things remain.He was repulsed in efforts after a pension by certain caprices of law. His scars proved his only medals. He dictated a little book, the record of his fortunes. But long ago it faded out of print--himself out of being--his name out of memory. He died the same day that the oldest oak on his native hills was blown down.””

— Herman Melville

“Sharing the same blood with England, and yet her proved foe in two wars”

— Herman Melville

“Well, ye're an honest rebel”

— Herman Melville

“But, indeed, dull, dreary adversity was now in store for him; and adversity, come it at eighteen or eighty, is the true old age of man.””

— Herman Melville

“Ist die Zivilisation etwas Besonderes, oder ist sie eine fortgeschrittene Stufe der Barbarei?””

— Herman Melville

“So at midnight, the heart of the metropolis of modern civilization was secretly trod by this jaunty barbarian in broadcloth; a sort of prophetical ghost, glimmering in anticipation upon the advent of those tragic scenes of the French Revolution which levelled the exquisite refinement of Paris with the bloodthirsty ferocity of Borneo; showing that broaches and finger-rings, not less than nose-rings and tattooing, are tokens of the primeval savageness which ever slumbers in human kind, civilized or uncivilized.””

— Herman Melville