# Quote — Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

> "I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?"
>
> As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit — as some earnest descriptive speakers will — as unconsciously to wreathe his form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise, apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and presently said: "When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and conscience, and revel for a while in the care-free, joyous life of a perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?"

- Author: [Herman Melville](https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville.md)
- Book: [The Confidence-Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Confidence-Man#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/i-am-pleased

## More from this book

> "Then, good-night, good-night; and Providence have both of us in its good keeping."
>
> "Be sure it will," eying the old man with sympathy, as for the moment he stood, money-belt in hand, and life-preserver under arm, "be sure it will, sir, since in Providence, as in man, you and I equally put trust.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/then-good-night-good-night.md)

> The next moment, the waning light expired, and with it the waning flames of the horned altar, and the waning halo round the robed man's brow; while in the darkness which ensued, the cosmopolitan kindly led the old man away. Something further may follow of this Masquerade.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/the-next-moment.md)

> With you, sir, I believe in a Committee of Safety, holding silent sessions over all, in an invisible patrol, most alert when we soundest sleep, and whose beat lies as much through forests as towns, along rivers as streets. In short, I never forget that passage of Scripture which says, "Jehovah shall be thy confidence." The traveler who has not this trust, what miserable misgivings must be his; or, what vain, short-sighted care must he take of himself.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/herman-melville/the-confidence-man/with-you-sir.md)