Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.
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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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Literature is the thought of thinking souls.
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The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
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To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?
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The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.
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Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
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Violence does even justice unjustly.
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A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.
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Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.
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I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.
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The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble.
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History: A distillation of rumor.
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Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking?
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The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it.
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Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him. It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!
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He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.
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In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.
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There is something in man which your science cannot satisfy.
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The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
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Time has only a relative existence.
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It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.
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The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself.
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There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.