Named source · 1821

On the Past and Future Quotes by William Hazlitt: Context & Meanings

2 quotations linked to On the Past and Future by or associated with William Hazlitt, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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1821 essay in Table-Talk

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Past, present and future, memory, anticipation, value and the asymmetry people often assign to time not yet lived.

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“The future is yet to come”

William Hazlitt

Meaning & context

The brief phrase anchors Hazlitt’s argument that the future does not possess greater reality merely because it has not happened yet; he compares its status with the already completed past.

Source details

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “The future is yet to come” occurs in Hazlitt’s comparison of the already-existing past with the not-yet-existing future: the full sentence continues that the future “has never been anything.” The retained short excerpt is therefore part of a philosophical contrast, not a prediction, forecasting rule or scientific proposition.

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“I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and some fondness for the past”

William Hazlitt

Meaning & context

Hazlitt states his own temporal bias plainly: he values present experience and retains an attachment to what has already been lived rather than treating only the future as significant.

Source details

Table-Talk, Volume I, Essay III, “On the Past and Future,” Project Gutenberg #3020. “I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and some fondness for the past” appears in the opening paragraph, where Hazlitt states his own lack of sanguine expectation before developing the essay’s argument. This is first-person literary-philosophical reflection, not an empirical claim about how people should value past, present or future.

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1821 essay in Table-Talk

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