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Richard Henry Dana Jr. Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Browse quotations by Richard Henry Dana Jr. with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.

Sources

All 3 works represented in this collection

The Seaman's Friend1841 · 1 quotation
To Cuba and Back1859 · 1 quotation
Two Years Before the Mast1840 · 1 quotation
Leading recurring themes
Courage 1Inspirational 1Learning 1Life 1Communication 1Leadership 1Life Lessons 1Thought Provoking 2Art 1Beautiful 1Character 1Creativity 1
Source identified1
He has a power and influence, both direct and indirect, which may be the means of much good or much evil.
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“He has a power and influence, both direct and indirect, which may be the means of much good or much evil.”

The Seaman's Friend · 1841
Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Meaning & context

Dana argues that authority magnifies personal conduct: a leader’s character can improve or damage the behavior and conditions of the people under that authority.

Source details

The Seaman's Friend, represented by Project Gutenberg #40958 (fifth edition, 1847; copyright entered 1841). Dana is discussing the master of a merchant vessel and the effect of his conduct on officers and crew. This is nineteenth-century maritime professional guidance, not current maritime law.

Source identified2
poetry and music, and not prose and speech, are the natural expressions of the deepest and highest emotions.
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“poetry and music, and not prose and speech, are the natural expressions of the deepest and highest emotions.”

To Cuba and Back · 1859
Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Richard Henry Dana Jr. (travel narrator)
Meaning & context

Dana treats music and poetry as forms especially suited to feelings that ordinary explanatory speech cannot fully carry.

Source details

To Cuba and Back, Chapter XVI, “Havana: Worship, Etiquette and Humanitarianism,” Project Gutenberg #33455. Dana reflects that poetry and music are natural expressions of the deepest emotions while observing Catholic worship in Havana. It is nineteenth-century first-person travel, aesthetic and religious observation rather than an empirical law about emotion or communication.

Source identified3
There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor’s life.
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“There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor’s life.”

Two Years Before the Mast · 1840
Meaning & context

Dana remembers how bewildering the first hours of shipboard life felt to a novice suddenly surrounded by unfamiliar orders, sounds and tasks.

Source details

Two Years Before the Mast, Chapter I, “Departure,” Project Gutenberg #2055. Dana describes his own bewilderment on first going to sea and calls a landsman beginning a sailor’s life uniquely helpless and pitiable. It is first-person maritime memoir shaped by rhetorical exaggeration, not a literal universal ranking of helplessness.