"This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 162
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moby-Dick
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Moby-Dick
151 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Moby-Dick →
Related Quotes
"In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper…"
"And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment."
"The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, he…"
"The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thenc…"
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely —having little or no money in my purse, and nothing p…"
"There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce sur…"
"Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon."
"Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going…"
"Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."
"Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death."