Billy Budd Quotes

Quote 1: "on shore he was a champion; afloat the spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost." Chapter 1, pg. 431

Quote 2: "[B]lessed are the peacemakers" Chapter 1, pg. 434

Quote 3: "And it may be that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs, which promised an opening into novel scenes and martial excitements." Chapter 1, pg. 435

Quote 4: "[an] upright barbarian" Chapter 2, pg. 438

Quote 5: "When it did, the lieutenants assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on them, in some instances, to stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns." Chapter 5, pg. 444

Quote 6: "Jemmy Legs!...What for? Why, he calls me 'the sweet and pleasant young fellow' they tell me." Chapter 9, pg. 453

Quote 7: "For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?" Chapter 11, pg. 456

Quote 8: "But after the little matter at the mess Billy Budd no more found himself in strange trouble at times about his hammock or his clothes bag or what not. As to that smile that occasionally sunned him, and the pleasant passing word, these were, if not more frequent, yet if anything more pronounced than before." Chapter 17, pg. 467

Quote 9: "heed what you speak. Just now, and in a case like this, there is a yardarm-end for the false witness." Chapter 18, pg. 474

Quote 10: "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Chapter 19, pg. 478

Quote 11: "Captain Vere tells the truth. It is just as Captain Vere says, but it is not as the master-at-arms said. I have eaten the King's bread and I am true to the King." Chapter 21, pg. 482

Quote 12: "Out of natural courtesy he received, but did not appropriate. It was like a gift placed in the palm of an outreached hand upon which the fingers do not close." Chapter 24, pg. 495

Quote 13: "At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of the dawn." Chapter 25, pg. 497

Quote 14: "With mankind,...forms, measured forms, are everything; and that is the import couched in the story of Orpheus with his lyre spellbinding the wild denizens of the wood." Chapter 27, pg. 501