How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. (1.2)
This is the lawyer who narrates "Bartleby," explaining that he is a lazy duffer who takes the easiest road possible. Bartleby is passive in some ways, but he's also stubborn in his passiveness. The narrator has a different sort of passiveness; instead of saying, "I prefer not to" he says, "Sure I will. Why not."
Quote #2
Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, "I would prefer not to." (2.23)
There's the famous line. Bartleby prefers not to check the paper, and then prefers not to write, and then prefers not to eat, and then prefers not to live. Be warned Shmoopers; once you start preferring not to, it's hard to say where all the passivity will end.
Quote #3
Nothing so irritates an earnest person as a passive resistance. (2.56)
Bartleby's passivity has sometimes been compared to passive resistance, as recommended (in Melville's time) by Henry David Thoreau, and later used by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in political resistance movements. But passive resistance, in later terms, is connected to a political program or goal. What is Bartleby's goal? He makes no demands; he just sits there. Is passive resistance political in itself, or does it need to be connected to an actual program for change?