Quotes & Sayings About Captain Vere

...innocence is not safe in a civilization like ours, where a man must practice a 'ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness' in order to defend himself against traps. This 'ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness' is not confined to business men, but exists everywhere. We all exercise it. I know I do, and I should be surprised if you, who are listening to me, didn't. All we can do (and Melville gives us this hint) is to exercise it consciously, as Captain Vere did. It is unconscious distrustfulness that corrodes the heart and destroys the heart's insight, and prevents it from saluting goodness. — E. M. Forster

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang! — Herman Melville

The thoughts we think in
childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when we
are grown up. — Henry De Vere Stacpoole