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A Person With Half Volition Goes Backwards And Forwards, But Makes No Progress On Even The Smoothest Of Roads.
-Thomas Carlyle
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A Person With Half

Thomas Carlyle
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A Person With Half Volition Goes Backwards And Forwards, But Makes No Progress On Even The Smoothest Of Roads.

Understanding the Quote: "a person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no..."

This quote by Thomas Carlyle reflects deeply on the theme of commitment. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Commitment, Progress, Half, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Thomas Carlyle interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle is celebrated for insightful thoughts on commitment and progress. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Commitment
Progress
Half
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A False Man Found A Religion? Why, A False Man Cannot Build A Brick House!
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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.
Love
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The True Epic Of Our Times Is Not "arm's And The Man," But "tools And The Man"--an Infinitely Wider Kind Of Epic.
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There Is But One Temple In This Universe: The Body. We Speak To God Whenever We Lay Our Hands Upon It.
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Hands
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Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom.
Art
Mushrooms
Antiques
Heroism Is The Divine Relation Which, In All Times, Unites A Great Man To Other Men.
Time
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Thought Once Awakened Does Not Again Slumber; Unfolds Itself Into A System Of Thought; Grows, In Man After Man, Generation After Generation, - Till Its Full Stature Is Reached, And Such System Of Thought Can Grow No Farther, But Must Give Place To Another.
Science
Men
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Music Is Well Said To Be The Speech Of Angels.
Inspirational
Music
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There Is No Life Of A Man, Faithfully Recorded, But Is A Heroic Poem Of Its Sort, Rhymed Or Unrhymed.
Life
Men
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The Grand Result Of Schooling Is A Mind With Just Vision To Discern, With Free Force To Do: The Grand Schoolmaster Is Practice.
Education
Practice
Mind
He That Has Done Nothing Has Known Nothing.
Done
Action
Known
God Gave You That Gifted Tongue Of Yours, And Set It Between Your Teeth, To Make Known Your True Meaning To Us, Not To Be Rattled Like A Muffin Man's Bell.
Men
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Bells
Terror Itself, When Once Grown Transcendental, Becomes A Kind Of Courage; As Frost Sufficiently Intense, According To The Poet Milton, Will Burn.
Frost
Kind
Intense
Venerable To Me Is The Hard Hand,--crooked, Coarse,--wherein, Notwithstanding, Lies A Cunning Virtue, Indispensably Royal As Of The Sceptre Of The Planet.
Lying
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Fame, We May Understand, Is No Sure Test Of Merit, But Only A Probability Of Such; It Is An Accident, Not A Property Of Man.
Men
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A Man Lives By Believing Something.
Believe
Men
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Let Time And Chance Combine, Combine! Let Time And Chance Combine! The Fairest Love From Heaven Above, That Love Of Yours Was Mine, My Dear! That Love Of Yours Was Mine.
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Heaven
Chance
Music Is Well Said To Be The Speech Of Angels; In Fact, Nothing Among The Utterances Allowed To Man Is Felt To Be So Divine. It Brings Us Near To The Infinite.
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Music
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Look Around You. Your World-hosts Are All In Mutiny, In Confusion, Destitution; On The Eve Of Fiery Wreck And Madness! They Will Not March Farther For You, On The Sixpence A Day And Supply-demand Principle; They Will Not; Nor Ought They, Nor Can They. Ye Shall Reduce Them To Order, Begin Reducing Them. To Order, To Just Subordination; Noble Loyalty In Return For Noble Guidance. Their Souls Are Driven Nigh Mad; Let Yours Be Sane And Ever Saner.
Loyalty
Order
Mad
Wonderful Force Of Public Opinion! We Must Act And Walk In All Points As It Prescribes; Follow The Traffic It Bids Us, Realize The Sum Of Money, The Degree Of Influence It Expects Of Us, Or We Shall Be Lightly Esteemed; Certain Mouthfuls Of Articulate Wind Will Be Blown At Us, And This What Mortal Courage Can Front?
Wind
Degrees
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No Person Is Important Enough To Make Me Angry.
Inspirational
Important
Enough
The Past Is All Holy To Us; The Dead Are All Holy; Even They That Were Wicked When Alive.
Time
Past
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The Wise Man Is But A Clever Infant, Spelling Letters From A Hieroglyphical Prophetic Book, The Lexicon Of Which Lies In Eternity.
Inspirational
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For Suffering And Enduring There Is No Remedy, But Striving And Doing.
Suffering Pain
Pain And Suffering
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We Arc The Miracle Of Miracles, The Great Inscrutable Mystery Of God.
Miracle
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Silence Is The Eternal Duty Of Man.
Men
Silence
Duty
If What You Have Done Is Unjust, You Have Not Succeeded.
Success
Done
Unjust
One Must Verify Or Expel His Doubts, And Convert Them Into The Certainty Of Yes Or No.
Doubt
Certainty
Converting
Clean Undeniable Right, Clear Undeniable Might: Either Of These Once Ascertained Puts An End To Battle. All Battle Is A Confused Experiment To Ascertain One And Both Of These.
Confused
Confusion
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He That Will Not Work According To His Faculty, Let Him Perish According To His Necessity: There Is No Law Juster Than That.
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Law
Faculty
Rare Benevolence, The Minister Of God.
Ministers
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Youth Is To All The Glad Season Of Life; But Often Only By What It Hopes, Not By What It Attains, Or What It Escapes.
Time
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Speech That Leads Not To Action, Still More That Hinders It, Is A Nuisance On The Earth.
Nuisance
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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?
Art
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We Are Not Altogether Here To Tolerate. We Are Here To Resist, To Control And Vanquish Withal.
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In The Huge Mass Of Evil As It Rolls And Swells, There Is Ever Some Good Working Toward Deliverance And Triumph.
Evil
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How Great A Possibility, How Small A Realized Result.
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Nature, After All, Is Still The Grand Agent In Making Poets.
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The Barrenest Of All Mortals Is The Sentimentalist.
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The True Church Of England, At This Moment, Lies In The Editors Of The Newspapers.
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How, Without Clothes, Could We Possess The Master Organ, Soul's Seat And True Pineal Gland Of The Body Social--i Mean A Purse?
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A Man With A Half Volition Goes Backwards And Forwards, And Makes No Way On The Smoothest Road; A Man With A Whole Volition Advances On The Roughest, And Will Reach His Purpose, If There Be Even A Little Worthiness In It. The Man Without A Purpose Is Like A Ship Without A Rudder - A Waif, A Nothing, A No Man. Have A Purpose In Life And Having It, Throw Such Strength Of Mind And Muscle Into Your Work As God Has Given You.
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Contented Saturnine Human Figures, A Dozen Or So Of Them, Sitting Around A Large Long Table...perfect Equality Is To Be The Rule; No Rising Or Notice Taken When Anybody Enters Or Leaves. Let The Entering Man Take His Place And Pipe, Without Obligatory Remarks; If He Cannot Smoke...let Him At Least Affect To Do So, And Not Ruffle The Established Stream Of Things.
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All History . . . Is An Inarticulate Bible.
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All Deep Things Are Song. It Seems Somehow The Very Central Essence Of Us, Song; As If All The Rest Were But Wrappages And Hulls!
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History Is The Distillation Of Rumour.
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The Greatest Of All Heroes Is One--whom We Do Not Name Here! Let Sacred Silence Meditate That Sacred Matter; You Will Find It The Ultimate Perfection Of A Principle Extant Throughout Man's Whole History On Earth.
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He That Has A Secret Should Not Only Hide It, But Hide That He Has It To Hide.
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Every Man Has A Coward And Hero In His Soul.
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Men
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For The Superior Morality, Of Which We Hear So Much, We Too Would Desire To Be Thankful: At The Same Time, It Were But Blindness To Deny That This Superior Morality Is Properly Rather An Inferior Criminality, Produced Not By Greater Love Of Virtue, But By Greater Perfection Of Police; And Of That Far Subtler And Stronger Police, Called Public Opinion.
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He Who Takes Not Counsel Of The Unseen And Silent, From Him Will Never Come Real Visibility And Speech.
Real
Unseen
Speech
If Time Is Precious, No Book That Will Not Improve By Repeated Readings Deserves To Be Read At All.
Time
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Cease To Brag To Me Of America, And Its Model Institutions And Constitutions. America, Too, Will Have To Strain Its Energies, Crack Its Sinews, And All But Break Its Heart, As The Rest Of Us Have Had To Do, In Thousand-fold Wrestle With The Pythons, And Mud-demons, Before It Can Become A Babitation For The Gods.
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That Monstrous Tuberosity Of Civilised Life, The Capital Of England.
London
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Labor Is Life: From The Inmost Heart Of The Worker Rises His God-given Force, The Sacred Celestial Life-essence Breathed Into Him By Almighty God!
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Essence
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Nature
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The Tragedy Of Life Is Not So Much What Men Suffer, But Rather What They Miss.
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Necessity Dispenseth With Decorum.
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History Is A Great Dust Heap.
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Fancy That Thou Deservest To Be Hangedthou Wilt Feel It Happiness To Be Only Shot: Fancy That Thou Deservest To Be Hanged Ina Hair Halter, It Will Be A Luxury To Die In Hemp.
Luxury
Hair
Guilt
Language Is Called The Garment Of Thought: However, It Should Rather Be, Language Is The Flesh-garment, The Body, Of Thought.
Body
Flesh
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If Those Gentlemen Would Let Me Alone I Should Be Much Obliged To Them. I Would Say, As Shakespeare Would Say... Sweet Friend, For Jesus Sake Forbear.
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Jesus
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With Respect To Duels, Indeed, I Have My Own Ideas. Few Things In This So Surprising World Strike Me With More Surprise. Two Little Visual Spectra Of Men, Hovering With Insecure Enough Cohesion In The Midst Of The Unfathomable, And To Dissolve Therein, At Any Rate, Very Soon, Make Pause At The Distance Of Twelve Paces Asunder; Whirl Around, And Simultaneously By The Cunningest Mechanism, Explode One Another Into Dissolution; And, Offhand, Become Air, And Non-extant--the Little Spitfires!
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Silence Is The Element In Which Great Things Fashion Themselves Together; That At Length They May Emerge, Full-formed And Majestic, Into The Daylight Of Life, Which They Are Thenceforth To Rule.
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Awe
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Stills
We Are To Remember What An Umpire Nature Is; What A Greatness, Composure Of Depth And Tolerance There Is In Her. You Take Wheat To Cast Into The Earth's Bosom; Your Wheat May Be Mixed With Chaff, Chopped Straw, Barn-sweepings, Dust And All Imaginable Rubbish; No Matter: You Cast It Into The Kind Just Earth; She Grows The Wheat, - The Whole Rubbish She Silently Absorbs, Shrouds It In, Says Nothing Of The Rubbish.
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The World Is A Thing That A Man Must Learn To Despise, And Even To Neglect, Before He Can Learn To Reverence It, And Work In It And For It.
Men
World
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Years
Two
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Home
Reform
Charity
Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.
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Products
Falsehood
Laughter Is The Cipher Key Wherewith We Decipher The Whole Man
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Men
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I Had A Lifelong Quarrel With God, But In The End We Made Up.
Faith
Christianity
Ends
The All Importance Of Clothes Has Sprung Up In The Intellect Of The Dandy Without Effort, Like An Instinct Of Genius; He Is Inspired With Clothes, A Poet Of Clothes.
Sprung Up
Clothes
Effort
No Conquest Can Ever Become Permanent Which Does Not Show Itself Beneficial To The Conquered As Well As To The Conquerors.
Victory
Doe
Shows
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Men
Vision
Depth
The Choking, Sweltering, Deadly, And Killing Rule Of No Rule; The Consecration Of Cupidity And Braying Of Folly, And Dim Stupidity And Baseness, In Most Of The Affairs Of Men. Slopshirts Attainable Three-halfpence Cheaper By The Ruin Of Living Bodies And Immortal Souls.
Men
Stupidity
Soul
With Stupidity And Sound Digestion, Man May Front Much.
Men
Stupidity
Sound
Hardened Round Us, Encasing Wholly Every Notion We Form Is A Wrapping Of Traditions, Hearsay's, And Mere Words.
Tradition
Form
Notion
Foolish Men Imagine That Because Judgment For An Evil Thing Is Delayed, There Is No Justice; But Only Accident Here Below. Judgment For An Evil Thing Is Many Times Delayed Some Day Or Two, Some Century Or Two, But It Is Sure As Life, It Is Sure As Death.
Death
Men
Two
The Lightning Spark Of Thought Generated In The Solitary Mind Awakens Its Likeness In Another Mind.
Innovation
Mind
Lightning
Statistics, One May Hope, Will Improve Gradually, And Become Good For Something. Meanwhile, It Is To Be Feared The Crabbed Satirist Was Partly Right, As Things Go: "a Judicious Man," Says He, "looks At Statistics, Not To Get Knowledge, But To Save Himself From Having Ignorance Foisted On Him."
Ignorance
Knowledge
Science
Man Is, Properly Speaking, Based Upon Hope, He Has No Other Possession But Hope; This World Of His Is Emphatically The Place Of Hope.
Hope
Men
World
We Call It A Society; And Go About Professing Openly The Totalest Separation, Isolation. Our Life Is Not A Mutual Helpfulness; But Rather, Cloaked Under Due Laws-of-war, Named Fair Competition And So Forth, It Is A Mutual Hostility.
War
Law
Competition
Wondrous Is The Strength Of Cheerfulness, Altogether Past Calculation Its Powers Of Endurance.
Past
Endurance
Cheerfulness
Instead Of Saying That Man Is The Creature Of Circumstance, It Would Be Nearer The Mark To Say That Man Is The Architect Of Circumstance.
Men
Bricks And Mortar
Empathy
A Witty Statesman Said, You Might Prove Anything By Figures.
Witty
Math
Science
They Have Their Belief, These Poor Tibet People, That Providence Sends Down Always An Incarnation Of Himself Into Every Generation. At Bottom Some Belief In A Kind Of Pope! At Bottom Still Better, A Belief That There Is A Greatest Man; That He Is Discoverable; That, Once Discovered, We Ought To Treat Him With An Obedience Which Knows No Bounds. This Is The Truth Of Grand Lamaism; The "discoverability" Is The Only Error Here.
Buddhism
Men
Errors
Nine-tenths Of The Miseries And Vices Of Mankind Proceed From Idleness.
Vices
Nine
Misery
If I Say That Shakespeare Is The Greatest Of Intellects, I Have Said All Concerning Him. But There Is More In Shakespeare's Intellect Than We Have Yet Seen. It Is What I Call An Unconscious Intellect; There Is More Virtue In It That He Himself Is Aware Of.
Virtue
Said
Intellect
The Man Who Cannot Wonder, Who Does Not Habitually Wonder (and Worship), Were He President Of Innumerable Royal Societies, And Carried The Whole Mecanique Celeste And Hegel's Philosophy, And The Epitome Of All Laboratories And Observatories With Their Results, In His Single Head, Is But A Pair Of Spectacles Behind Which There Is No Eye. Let Those Who Have Eyes Look Through Him, Then He May Be Useful.
Eye
Enthusiasm
Pairs
Genius Is An Infinite Capacity For Taking Pains.
Life
Motivational
Pain
Ever, As Before, Does Madness Remain A Mysterious-terrific, Altogether Infernal Boiling-up Of The Nether Chaotic Deep, Through This Fair-painted Vision Of Creation, Which Swims Thereon, Which We Name The Real.
Real
Names
Swim
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.
Heart
Men
Ease
Properly Speaking, All True Work Is Religion.
Work
Religion
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.
Bible
Home
Biblical
Silence Is As Deep As Eternity, Speech A Shallow As Time.
Time
Shallow Person
Silence
Wise Man Was He Who Counselled That Speculation Should Have Free Course, And Look Fearlessly Towards All The Thirty-two Points Of The Compass, Whithersoever And Howsoever It Listed.
Wise
Men
Should Have
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.
Ideas
Humanity
Honor
When Pococke Inquired Of Grotius, Where The Proof Was Of That Story Of The Pigeon, Trained To Pick Peas From Mahomet's (muhammad's) Ear, And Pass For An Angel Dictating To Him? Grotius Answered That There Was No Proof!
Islamic
Angel
Stories
No Ghost Was Every Seen By Two Pair Of Eyes.
Eye
Two
Pairs
The World Is A Republic Of Mediocrities, And Always Was.
Mediocrity
World
Republic
War Is A Quarrel Between Two Thieves Too Cowardly To Fight Their Own Battle; Therefore They Take Boys From One Village And Another Village, Stick Them Into Uniforms, Equip Them With Guns, And Let Them Loose Like Wild Beasts Against One Other.
Peace
Military
War
Doubt Of Any Kind Cannot Be Resolved Except By Action.
Doubt
Action
Kind
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.
Acting
Done
Shapes
The Suffering Man Ought Really To Consume His Own Smoke; There Is No Good In Emitting Smoke Till You Have Made It Into Fire.
Men
Fire
Suffering
History After All Is The True Poetry.
Art
Philosophy
History
The Great Man's Sincerity Is Of The Kind He Cannot Speak Of, Is Not Conscious Of: Nay, I Suppose, He Is Conscious Rather Of Insincerity; For What Man Can Walk Accurately By The Law Of Truth For One Day? No, The Great Man Does Not Boast Himself Sincere, Far From That; Perhaps Does Not Ask Himself If He Is So: I Would Say Rather, His Sincerity Does Not Depend On Himself; He Cannot Help Being Sincere!
Men
Law
One Day
Faith Is Loyalty To Some Inspired Teacher, Some Spiritual Hero.
Loyalty
Spiritual
Teacher
The Mathematics Of High Achievement
Achievement
Mathematics
It Is Great, And There Is No Other Greatness-to Make One Nook Of God's Creation More Fruitful, Better, More Worthy Of God; To Make Some Human Heart A Little Wiser, Manlier, Happier-more Blessed.
Blessed
Heart
Greatness
In No Time Whatever Can Small Critics Entirely Eradicate Out Of Living Men's Hearts A Certain Altogether Peculiar Collar Reverence For Great Men--genuine Admiration, Loyalty, Adora-tion.
Loyalty
Appreciation
Heart
Make Yourself An Honest Man, And Then You May Be Sure There Is One Less Rascal In The World.
Honesty
Men
World
A Thinking Man Is The Worst Enemy The Prince Of Darkness Can Have; Every Time Such An One Announces Himself, I Doubt Not There Runs A Shudder Through The Nether Empire; And New Emissaries Are Trained With New Tactics, To, If Possible, Entrap And Hoodwink And Handcuff Him.
Running
Men
Thinking
Let A Man Try Faithfully, Manfully To Be Right; He Will Grow Daily More And More Right. It Is At Bottom The Condition On Which All Men Have To Cultivate Themselves.
Men
Trying
Grows
The Leafy Blossoming Present Time Springs From The Whole Past, Remembered And Unrememberable.
Spring
Past
Remembrance
Everywhere The Human Soul Stands Between A Hemisphere Of Light And Another Of Darkness On The Confines Of Two Everlasting Empires, - Necessity And Free Will.
Freedom
Light
Two
We Observe With Confidence That The Truly Strong Mind, View It As Intellect Or Morality, Or Under Any Other Aspect, Is Nowise The Mind Acquainted With Its Strength; That Here The Sign Of Health Is Unconsciousness.
Strong
Greatness
Views
We Do Everything By Custom, Even Believe By It; Our Very Axioms, Let Us Boast Of Free-thinking As We May, Are Oftenest Simply Such Beliefs As We Have Never Heard Questioned.
Believe
Thinking
May
The End Of Man Is Action.
Men
Action
Ends
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.
Mistake
Gold
Coins
Old Age Is Not A Matter For Sorrow. It Is Matter For Thanks If We Have Left Our Work Done Behind Us.
Birthday
Time
Sorrow
A Collection Of Books Is The Best Of All Universities.
Book
Collections
University
Oh, Give Us The Man Who Sings At His Work.
Motivational
Happiness
Work
It Were A Real Increase Of Human Happiness, Could All Young Men From The Age Of Nineteen Be Covered Under Barrels, Or Rendered Otherwise Invisible; And There Left To Follow Their Lawful Studies And Callings, Till They Emerged, Sadder And Wiser, At The Age Of Twenty-five.
Birthday
Real
Men
Men Do Less Than They Ought, Unless They Do All They Can.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Men
What You See, But Can't See Over Is As Good As Infinite.
Infinite
Ability
History Shows That The Majority Of People That Have Done Anything Great Have Passed Their Youth In Seclusion.
Being Alone
Creativity
People
Persons, With Big Wigs Many Of Them And Austere Aspect, Whom I Take To Be Professors Of The Dismal Science… Coining “dismal Science” As A Nickname For Political Economy
Political
Wigs
Nicknames
This Is The Eternal Law Of Nature For A Man, My Beneficent Exeter-hall Friends; This, That He Shall Be Permitted, Encouraged, And If Need Be, Compelled To Do What Work The Maker Of Him Has Intended By The Making Of Him For This World! Not That He Should Eat Pumpkin With Never Such Felicity In The West India Islands Is, Or Can Be, The Blessedness Of Our Black Friend; But That He Should Do Useful Work There, According As The Gifts Have Been Bestowed On Him For That.
Men
Purpose
Makers
He Who Has No Vision Of Eternity Has No Hold On Time.
Time
Vision
Eternity
The Philosopher Is He To Whom The Highest Has Descended, And The Lowest Has Mounted Up; Who Is The Equal And Kindly Brother Of All.
Brother
Philosophy
Philosopher
Today Is Not Yesterday: We Ourselves Change; How Can Our Works And Thoughts, If They Are Always To Be The Fittest, Continue Always The Same? Change, Indeed Is Painful; Yet Ever Needful; And If Memory Have Its Force And Worth, So Also Has Hope.
Change
Hope
Pain
Reality, If Rightly Interpreted, Is Grander Than Fiction.
Reality
Fiction
Ifs
In The True Literary Man There Is Thus Ever, Acknowledged Or Not By The World, A Sacredness: He Is The Light Of The World; The World's Priest; -- Guiding It, Like A Sacred Pillar Of Fire, In Its Dark Pilgrimage Through The Waste Of Time.
Dark
Men
Fire
What This Country Needs Is A Man Who Knows God Other Than By Heresay.
Country
Men
Needs
The True Past Departs Not, No Truth Or Goodness Realized By Man Ever Dies, Or Can Die; But All Is Still Here, And, Recognized Or Not, Lives And Works Through Endless Change.
Life
Change
Truth
Skepticism, As I Said, Is Not Intellectual Only; It Is Moral Also; A Chronic Atrophy And Disease Of The Whole Soul. A Man Lives By Believing Something; Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things. A Sad Case For Him When All That He Can Manage To Believe Is Something He Can Button In His Pocket, And With One Or The Other Organ Eat And Digest! Lower Than That He Will Not Get.
Believe
Men
Soul
He Who Has Health, Has Hope; And He Who Has Hope, Has Everything.
Inspirational
Fitness
Hope
Not Brute Force But Only Persuasion And Faith Are The Kings Of This World.
Kings
World
Persuasion
I Call That [book Of Job], Apart From All Theories About It, One Of The Grandest Things Ever Written With Pen.
Bible
Jobs
Book
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.
Philosophy
Philosophical
Science
Also, What Mountains Of Dead Ashes, Wreck And Burnt Bones, Does Assiduous Pedantry Dig Up From The Past Time And Name It History.
Past
Names
History
We Have Chosen Mahomet Not As The Most Eminent Prophet; But As The One We Are Freest To Speak Of. He Is By No Means The Truest Of Prophets; But I Do Esteem Him A True One.
Mean
Speak
Prophet
Stop A Moment, Cease Your Work, And Look Around You.
Inspirational
Vision
Looks
Thought, True Labor Of Any Kind, Highest Virtue Itself, Is It Not The Daughter Of Pain?
Daughter
Pain
Creative
There Is Always Hope In A Man That Actually And Earnestly Works: In Idleness Alone Is There Perpetual Despair.
Work
Men
It Is Part Of My Creed That The Only Poetry Is History, Could We Tell It Right.
History
Creeds
Poetry Is
Cherish What Is Dearest While You Have It Near You, And Wait Not Till It Is Far Away. Blind And Deaf That We Are; Oh, Think, If Thou Yet Love Anybody Living, Wait Not Till Death Sweep Down The Paltry Little Dust Clouds And Dissonances Of The Moment, And All Be Made At Last So Mournfully Clear And Beautiful, When It Is Too Late.
Beautiful
Thinking
Clouds
Leaders: Captains Of Industry.
Leadership
Captains
Industry
The Christian Must Be Consumed By The Conviction Of The Infinite Beauty Of Holiness And The Infinite Damnability Of Sin.
Inspirational
Christian
Infinite Beauty
The Fine Arts Once Divorcing Themselves From Truth Are Quite Certain To Fall Mad, If They Do Not Die.
Art
Fall
Mad
It Is In General More Profitable To Reckon Up Our Defeats Than To Boast Of Our Attainments.
Basketball
Defeat
Attainment
When We Can Drain The Ocean Into Mill-ponds, And Bottle Up The Force Of Gravity, To Be Sold By Retail, In Gas Jars; Then May We Hope To Comprehend The Infinitudes Of Man's Soul Under Formulas Of Profit And Loss; And Rule Over This Too, As Over A Patent Engine, By Checks, And Valves, And Balances.
Ocean
Loss
Technology
Wonder Is The Basis Of Worship.
Worship
Wonder
Bases
Our Works Are The Mirror Wherein The Spirit First Sees Its Natural Lineaments. Hence, Too, The Folly Of That Impossible Precept, Know Theyself; Till It Be Translated Into This Partially Possible One, Know What Thou Canst Work At.
Life
Success
Work
Nothing Is More Terrible Than Activity Without Insight.
Business
Learning
Planning
Considering The Multitude Of Mortals That Handle The Pen In These Days, And Can Mostly Spell, And Write Without Glaring Violations Of Grammar, The Question Naturally Arises: How Is It, Then, That No Work Proceeds From Them, Bearing Any Stamp Of Authenticity And Permanence; Of Worth For More Than One Day?
Writing
One Day
Authenticity
No Great Man Lives In Vain. The History Of The World Is But The Biography Of Great Men.
Men
Greatness
History
The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.
Journalism
Estates
Realms
Love Not Pleasure; Love God.
Pleasure Love
God Love
Pleasure
Speech Is Human, Silence Is Divine, Yet Also Brutish And Dead: Therefore We Must Learn Both Arts.
Art
Silence
Speech
Lives The Man That Can Figure A Naked Duke Of Windlestraw Addressing A Naked House Of Lords?
Men
House
Dukes
Blessed Be The God's Voice; For It Is True, And Falsehoods Have To Cease Before It!
Truth
Blessed
Voice
He Who Cannot Withal Keep His Mind To Himself Cannot Practice Any Considerable Thing Whatsoever.
Practice
Silence
Mind
The Dead Are All Holy, Even They That Were Base And Wicked While Alive. Their Baseness And Wickedness Was Not They, Was But The Heavy And Unmanageable Environment That Lay Round Them.
Evil
Wicked
Alive
Manhood Begins When We Have In Any Way Made Truce With Necessity; Begins Even When We Have Surrendered To Necessity, As The Most Part Only Do; But Begins Joyfully And Hopefully Only When We Have Reconciled Ourselves To Necessity; And Thus, In Reality, Triumphed Over It, And Felt That In Necessity We Are Free.
Reality
Way
Made
Woe To Him, . . . Who Has No Court Of Appeal Against The World's Judgment.
World
Woe
Judgment
Naps Are A Way Of Traveling Painlessly Through Time Into The Future.
Time
Naps
Way
My Whinstone House My Castle Is, I Have My Own Four Walls.
Wall
Home
House
We Were Wise Indeed, Could We Discern Truly The Signs Of Our Own Time; And By Knowledge Of Its Wants And Advantages, Wisely Adjust Our Own Position In It. Let Us, Instead Of Gazing Idly Into The Obscure Distance, Look Calmly Around Us, For A Little, On The Perplexed Scene Where We Stand. Perhaps, On A More Serious Inspection, Something Of Its Perplexity Will Disappear, Some Of Its Distinctive Characters And Deeper Tendencies More Clearly Reveal Themselves; Whereby Our Own Relations To It, Our Own True Aims And Endeavors In It, May Also Become Clearer.
Wise
Distance
Character
If I Had My Way, The World Would Hear A Pretty Stern Command - Exit Christ.
Atheism
World
Way
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.
Memories
Writing
Character
There Are Remedies For All Things But Death.
Death
Remedy
All Things
Great Men Are The Modelers, Patterns, And In A Wide Sense Creators, Of Whatsoever The General Mass Of Men Contrived To Do And Attain.
Inspirational
Men
Patterns
Happy Season Of Childhood! Kind Nature, That Art To All A Bountiful Mother; That Visitest The Poor Man's Hut With Auroral Radiance; And For Thy Nursling Hast Provided A Soft Swathing Of Love And Infinite Hope Wherein He Waxes And Slumbers, Danced Round By Sweetest Dreams!
Mother
Dream
Art
Show Me The Man You Honor, And I Will Know What Kind Of Man You Are.
Motivational
Leadership
Life And Love
Variety Is The Condition Of Harmony.
Harmony
Variety
Conditions
In A Different Time, In A Different Place, It Is Always Some Other Side Of Our Common Human Nature That Has Been Developing Itself. The Actual Truth Is The Sum Of All These.
Different
Sides
Common
Rest Is For The Dead.
Death
Dying
The First Purpose Of Clothes... Was Not Warmth Or Decency, But Ornament.... Among Wild People, We Find Tattooing And Painting Even Prior To Clothes. The First Spiritual Want Of A Barbarous Man Is Decoration; As Indeed We Still See Among The Barbarous Classes In Civilized Countries.
Country
Spiritual
Men
Parliament Will Train You To Talk; And Above All Things To Hear, With Patience, Unlimited Quantities Of Foolish Talk.
Patience
Foolish
Parliament
He That Works And Does Some Poem, Not He That Merely Says One, Is Worthy Of The Name Of Poet.
Names
Doe
Poet
A Fundamental Mistake To Call Vehemence And Rigidity Strength! A Man Is Not Strong Who Takes Convulsion-fits; Though Six Men Cannot Hold Him Then. He That Can Walk Under The Heaviest Weight Without Staggering, He Is The Strong Man . . . A Man Who Cannot Hold His Peace, Till The Time Come For Speaking And Acting, Is No Right Man.
Strength
Strong
Mistake
Adversity Is The Diamond Dust Heaven Polishes Its Jewels With.
Inspirational
Positive
Christian
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