Daily Inspiration Quote by Herman Melville

Melville skewers a taboo kindness: the way we excuse cruelty when it comes wrapped in a death sentence. The line opens with a blunt observation - “Some dying men are the most tyrannical” - stripping the dying of automatic sainthood. Illness doesn’t purify character; it can concentrate it. Facing the ultimate loss of control, a person may grab for whatever authority remains: over nurses, family, shipmates, anyone within reach. Tyranny becomes a last, petty proof of existence.

Then comes the barb: “since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.” The sentence performs a moral sleight of hand. It sounds humane, even tender, but the logic is coldly transactional: indulge them because their reign is almost over. Mercy is justified not by virtue but by convenience. Melville lets compassion and resentment share the same breath, exposing how often “patience” is really countdown thinking.

The subtext is social as much as psychological. Melville wrote in a world of rigid hierarchies - captains and crews, masters and subordinates - where power could be arbitrary, and sentimentality could mask self-interest. His novels repeatedly test the romance of authority against its uglier impulses. Here, death functions as the final audit of power: the tyrant is temporarily unstoppable, yet ultimately irrelevant.

What makes the line work is its double stance: it grants a small, grim permission to feel irritated, while still recommending restraint. Indulgence becomes less a halo than a coping strategy - a way for the living to keep their decency intact while waiting out the storm.