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At worst, is not this an unjust world, full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-footed or two-footed?
Thomas Carlyle -
It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.
Thomas Carlyle
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It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.
Thomas Carlyle -
Language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, the body, of thought.
Thomas Carlyle -
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
Thomas Carlyle -
There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!
Thomas Carlyle -
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.
Thomas Carlyle -
Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.
Thomas Carlyle
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The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won't in the end affirm or deny anything.
Thomas Carlyle -
If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.
Thomas Carlyle -
It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.
Thomas Carlyle -
Thought is the parent of the deed.
Thomas Carlyle -
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
Thomas Carlyle -
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
Thomas Carlyle
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A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.
Thomas Carlyle -
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
Thomas Carlyle -
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
Thomas Carlyle -
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
Thomas Carlyle -
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
Thomas Carlyle -
The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.
Thomas Carlyle
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Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!
Thomas Carlyle -
The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant.
Thomas Carlyle -
Just in the ratio knowledge increases, faith decreases.
Thomas Carlyle -
To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.
Thomas Carlyle