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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
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Herman Melville
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: August 1
Died: 1891
Died: September 28
Art Collector
Essayist
Lecturer
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Sailor
Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Hermann Melville
Herman Melvill
Wife
Textbooks
Forever
Backward
Looking
Governed
Future
Solely
Free
Tyrants
Past
Incapable
Like
Bible
Crystallized
Stand
Textbook
More quotes by Herman Melville
Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.
Herman Melville
The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
Herman Melville
He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
Herman Melville
Thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
Herman Melville
Failure is the test of greatness.
Herman Melville
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, cursesmix with tears and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own.
Herman Melville
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Herman Melville
That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
Herman Melville
In truth, a mature man who uses hair oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.
Herman Melville
There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.
Herman Melville
This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant I act under orders.
Herman Melville
And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened.
Herman Melville
A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.
Herman Melville
You know nothing till you know all which is the reason we never know any thing.
Herman Melville
Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville
There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.
Herman Melville
Men there are, who having quite done with the world, all its merely worldly contents are become so far indifferent, that they carelittle of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
Herman Melville
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
Herman Melville
Youth is the time when hearts are large.
Herman Melville
Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains and barbarous tribes have sheltered under her wings, when the enlightened people of the plain have nestled under different pinions.
Herman Melville
