Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.
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Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.
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What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?
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Let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.
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Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
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Violence does even justice unjustly.
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A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
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Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.
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He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.
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One seems to believe almost all that they believe; and when they stop short and call it a Religion, and you pass on, and call it only a reminiscence of one, should you not part with the kiss of peace?
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Superstition! that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, with all its racks, and poison chalices, and foul sleeping draughts, is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there and will reappear.
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The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.
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Properly speaking, all true work is religion.
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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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Give us, O give us the man who sings at his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time . . . he will do it better . . . he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible to fatigue while he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres.
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Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.
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The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
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Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.
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The mathematics of high achievement.
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My books are friends that never fail me.
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Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age.
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As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him I justly can.
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Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.
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Debt is a bottomless sea.