Bartleby's Quotes

#1. Grab some caviar from the kitchen. You wouldn't believe the muck they feed us in Bartleby's for ten thousand a term.

Eoin Colfer

#2. Do no evilness because it is a small one; do not leave a small deed undone because it is just a petty one.

Liu Bei

#3. Sometimes we even have to risk making fools of ourselves.

E.L. Konigsburg

#4. old doesn't always mean less advanced." I

Nnedi Okorafor

#5. Bartleby is never happy, but he never can be, you know. Life in general offends him. Happiness is something that happens to other people, because life happens to Bartleby. It happens to him frequently and unwarrantedly, and every time he is forced to suffer it, he is always disappointed.

Michelle Franklin

#6. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby, in a singular mild, firm voice, replied, I would prefer not to.

Herman Melville

#7. My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion.

Herman Melville

#8. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles of mine touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom.

Herman Melville

#9. Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

Herman Melville

#10. But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.

Philip Agee

#11. Fortinbras Bartleby, ten years old when he had died (of consumption, he had told Bod, who had mistakenly believed for several years that Fortinbras had been eaten by lions or bears, and was extremely disappointed to learn it was merely a disease), now apologized to Bod.

Neil Gaiman

#12. You are divine, you are perfect, but as an artist, you create your own story and you have the illusion that the story is real. You live your life by justifying that story. And by justifying the story, you are wasting your life.

Miguel Ruiz

#13. If you make a Star Wars reference, everybody's familiar with that. It's a common reference that most people can relate to - Bartleby, The Scrivener, probably not so much.

Adam Reed

#14. think the word you might be searching for," she finally said, "is stupefied. Or awed? Inspired?" She gave a shy little smile. "But vib. I'm not mad at you, Bartleby." My heart felt like a rubber ball bouncing down the stairs.

Alena Graedon

#15. She was by no means one of the great refusers. Not an existentialist hero, or a Rosa Parks, or even a Bartleby.

Renata Adler

#16. I don't talk ill about people I don't know," said Bartleby. "I only disparage them in silence and hope they die.

Michelle Franklin

#17. You take on the responsibility for making your dream a reality.

Les Brown