Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-Street

by Herman Melville

While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done.

Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, "I would prefer not to."

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment.

Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.

What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.

Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word "prefer" upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions.

One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.