in Quotes & Aphorisms (Angel)
Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
from the book "" by Herman Melville
Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!
The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?)
In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court, on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General, follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
But oh! Shipmates! On the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
In this world of lies, truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great art of telling the truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into still subtler form.
What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event, the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.