Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike.
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The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.
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What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that!
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Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.
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The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.
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The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin.
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Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.
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The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.
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Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther.
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True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
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There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.
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We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it?
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When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
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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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It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.
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Blessed be the God's voice; for it is true, and falsehoods have to cease before it!
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Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.
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Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.
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Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.
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That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
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Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.
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Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation.
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What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?
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If a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead.