Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.
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Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this earth.
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The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.
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We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.
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Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind.
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The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
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I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.
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The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?
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We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
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Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.
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By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
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Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?
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Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
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A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.
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The meaning of song goes deep. Who in logical words can explain the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into that!
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Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.
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Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.
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There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed.
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All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
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Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.
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Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.
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They only are wise who know that they know nothing.
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The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows. The greatest of faults, I should say is to be conscious of none.
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Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.