Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.
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The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
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The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.
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The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far-distant, long-forgotten home.
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Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.
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In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him.
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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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Blessed be the God's voice; for it is true, and falsehoods have to cease before it!
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Pain was not given thee merely to be miserable under; learn from it, turn it to account.
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If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
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All comes out even at the end of the day.
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Roguery is thought by some to be cunning and laughable: it is neither; it is devilish.
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Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.
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Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
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We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.
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Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
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Biography is the only true history.
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There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.
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Thought will not work except in silence.
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The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
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Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
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Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.
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Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us?
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Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.