Herman Melville Quotes
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Harper & Brothers, 1851, p. 27.
This pledge was taken by over half a million Americans in Mathew's 1849-1851 tour of the United States promoting the Teetotal Abstinence Society.
The distinction between recreational drinking and heavy drinking is a subtle one and rarely made until modern times. Most leaders who would not have heavy drinkers in positions of responsibility were usually themselves teetotalers and they were very rare. Heavy drinkers and alcoholics have been in positions of responsibility throughout history including modern times—eg House Ways & Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Peter was unusual in that he made the distinction.
Most people only know about Garrison’s abolition crusade. However he had others like temperance.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.
