Bartleby, the Scrivener

by Herman Melville

face flamed with augmented blazonry,

I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers--ambition and indigestion.

the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nut-shell.

Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all.

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

So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.

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.

I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks.

like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.