Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.

Herman Melville
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk...
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk...
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk...
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk...
About This Quote

There are many ways to interpret this quote. It means that someone who is drunk is no better than a cannibal. A drunk can be just as cruel as a cannibal. Instead of having the ability to reason with the drunk, you have to deal with his or her brutality.

Source: Mobydick Or, The Whale

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More Quotes By Herman Melville
  1. Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of...

  2. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish!...

  3. Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's...

  4. Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

  5. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.

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