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Herman Melville Quotes about Past

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The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend.

The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

Herman Melville
Book, Past, Tyrants
Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1541, Delphi Classics

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.

Herman Melville
Past, Tyrants, Textbooks
Herman Melville (2016). “White Jacket”, p.161, Herman Melville

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

Herman Melville
Past, Tyrants, Wife
Herman Melville (2000). “White-jacket, Or, The World in a Man-of-war”, p.152, Oxford University Press, USA

But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright son has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves. Because they have no memory . . . because they are not human.

Herman Melville
Memories, Son, Past
Herman Melville (1856). “The Piazza Tales”, p.267

I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a scar.

Herman Melville
Past, Scar, Scorching
Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.456

To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.

Herman Melville
Past, Victory, Hull
Herman Melville (2016). “Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories”, p.166, Penguin

He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.

Herman Melville
Appreciation, Past, Light
Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.464, Northwestern University Press

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