Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Free
Tyrants
Past
Incapable
Like
Bible
Crystallized
Stand
Textbook
Wife
Textbooks
Forever
Backward
Looking
Governed
Future
Solely

More quotes by Herman Melville

Image
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Herman Melville
Image
Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.
Herman Melville
Image
None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
Herman Melville
Image
Leviathan is not the biggest fish — I have heard of Krakens.
Herman Melville
Image
Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe.
Herman Melville
Image
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
Herman Melville
Image
Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.
Herman Melville
Image
One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocence self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.
Herman Melville
Image
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.
Herman Melville
Image
Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling.
Herman Melville
Image
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Herman Melville
Image
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
Image
There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.
Herman Melville
Image
For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men well enough they know they are in peril well enough they know the causes of that peril--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
Herman Melville
Image
Failure is the test of greatness.
Herman Melville
Image
Appalling is the soul of a man! Better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the uttermost orbit of our sun, than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself.
Herman Melville
Image
Book! You lie there the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.
Herman Melville
Image
A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
Herman Melville
Image
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.
Herman Melville
Image
Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?
Herman Melville