Now I must write personally; but I would not, if I didn't know that nothing we can say about ourselves is personal. I read the nov...el when I was fourteen or so; understanding very well the isolation described in it; responding to her sense of Africa the magnificent--mine, and everyone's who knows Africa; realizing that this was one of the few rare books. For it is in that small number of novels, with Moby Dick, Jude the Obscure, Wuthering Heights, perhaps one or two others, which is on a frontier of the human mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perve...rsion and they are nowise different from one another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of go...od or evil motives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of ...the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtue...s. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusivenes...s, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »