Herman Melville Quotes About Mankind

Quotes about: Mankind

• 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

• 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

  Wise, Thinking, Giving

  Herman Melville (2016). “The Confidence-Man”, p.31, Open Road Media

• all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

  Herman Melville

  Miserable, Sin, Bostonians

  Herman Melville (1963). “The Works of Herman Melville: Billy Budd, and other prose picecs”

• Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Rose, Bird

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.34, Northwestern University Press

• Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garbs of common-placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve?

  Herman Melville

  Stars, Faces, Bricks

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.179, Herman Melville

• Twelve o'clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill; and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine; setting an eminent example to all mankind.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Keys, Stopping

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.1428, Delphi Classics

• Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

  Herman Melville

  Running, Men, Glowing

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.127, Velvet Element Books

• Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from that same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Moon, Saturn

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale”, p.373, Cosimo, Inc.

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