Bartleby, the Scrivener / A Story of Wall-Street

Either you must do something, or something must be done to you

Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall

"What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?"

The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a man of preferences than assumptions.

"I would prefer not," he replied, with his back still towards me.
"You must."

but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.

The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam

For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own premises

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made according to common usage and common sense?"