Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Creation is great, and cannot be understood.
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Leaders: Captains of industry.
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Society is founded on hero-worship.
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It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
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Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.
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A poor creature who has said or done nothing worth a serious man taking the trouble of remembering.
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No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
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The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.
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A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.
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Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; h e has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.
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History is philosophy teaching by experience.
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The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
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Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.
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A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.
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Earnestness alone makes life eternity.
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The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.
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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
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That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,-for we have no word to speak about it.
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Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.
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The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.
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The greatest security against sin is to be shocked at its presence.
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Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
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With union grounded on falsehood and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable; the noisome is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!
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The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.