Israel Potter Quotes

“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, Israel Potter His Fifty Years of Exile

“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, Israel Potter

“Sharing the same blood with England, and yet her proved foe in two wars—not wholly inclined at bottom to forget an old grudge—intrepid, unprincipled, reckless, predatory, with boundless ambition, civilized in externals but a savage at heart, America is, or may yet be, the Paul Jones of nations. Regarded in this indicatory”
― Herman Melville, Israel Potter His Fifty Years of Exile

“Well, ye're an honest rebel—rebel, yes, rebel. Hark ye, hark. Say nothing of this talk to any one. And hark again. So long as you remain here at Kew, I shall see that you are safe—safe." "God bless your Majesty!" "Eh?" "God bless your noble Majesty?" "Come—come—come," smiled the king in delight, "I thought I could conquer ye—conquer ye." "Not the king, but the king's kindness, your Majesty.”
― Herman Melville, Israel Potter His Fifty Years of Exile

“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, Israel Potter His Fifty Years of Exile

“Ist die Zivilisation etwas Besonderes, oder ist sie eine fortgeschrittene Stufe der Barbarei?”
― Herman Melville, Israel Potter

“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, Israel Potter His Fifty Years of Exile