How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Is the sight of humanity so very disagreeable to you then? Ah, I may be foolish, but for my part, in all its aspects, I love it. Served up la Pole, or la Moor, la Ladrone, or la Yankee, that good dish, man, still delights me; or rather is man a wine I never weary of comparing and sipping; wherefore am I a pledged cosmopolitan, a sort of London-Dock-Vault connoisseur, going about from Teheran to Natchitoches, a taster of races; in all his vintages, smacking my lips over this racy creature, man, continually. But as there are teetotal palates which have a distaste even for Amontillado, so I suppose there may be teetotal souls which relish not even the very best brands of humanity." (24, 12)
Frank is shocked—shocked—at Pitch's serious lack of interest in making nice with the world. Cue his chance to talk about how much and in what manner he loves mankind. In this description, we can't help but notice how he's using a lot words associated with tasty snacks. More accurately, beverages. Come to think of it, he loves all the people of the world after "sipping" these great "vintages." Is this a realistic point of view, or is Frank kind of a smarmbot?
Quote #8
"Charity is one thing, and truth is another," rejoined he with the wooden leg: "he's a rascal, I say."
"But why not, friend, put as charitable a construction as one can upon the poor fellow?" said the soldierlike Methodist, with increased difficulty maintaining a pacific demeanor towards one whose own asperity seemed so little to entitle him to it: "he looks honest, don't he?"
"Looks are one thing, and facts are another," snapped out the other perversely; "and as to your constructions, what construction can you put upon a rascal, but that a rascal he is?" (3, 33-35)
Looks like the man with the wooden leg doesn't put much stock in looks. (Has he been chatting with the barber?) He's been using that suspicion to conveniently excuse himself from having to be charitable. If he can't trust people, he figures, then he doesn't have love them.
Quote #9
"Nothing; the foiled wolf's parting howl," said the Methodist. "Spleen, much spleen, which is the rickety child of his evil heart of unbelief: it has made him mad. I suspect him for one naturally reprobate. Oh, friends," raising his arms as in the pulpit, "oh beloved, how are we admonished by the melancholy spectacle of this raver. Let us profit by the lesson; and is it not this: that if, next to mistrusting Providence, there be aught that man should pray against, it is against mistrusting his fellow-man. I have been in mad-houses full of tragic mopers, and seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace of the idiot at him." (3, 56)
This here's a big ol' sermon using the grumpy man with the wooden leg as a sort of scapegoat-like example of what not to do. The Righteous trust in Providence, and therefore, they pity others; the "wrong-teous" are moody and make "vultures of" themselves. Um, what? Well, have you ever heard the expression "eat your heart out"? It's kind of like that: you get so upset that your negative vibes start feeding on you until you're kaput.