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History, As It Lies At The Root Of All Science, Is Also The First Distinct Product Of Man's Spiritual Nature, His Earliest Expression Of What May Be Called Thought.

-Thomas Carlyle

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History, As It Lies

Thomas Carlyle

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History, As It Lies At The Root Of All Science, Is Also The First Distinct Product Of Man's Spiritual Nature, His Earliest Expression Of What May Be Called Thought.

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Nothing Ever Happens But Once In All This World. What I Do Now I Do Once For All. It Is Over And Gone, With All Its Eternity Of Solemn Meaning.

The Eye Of The Intellect "sees In All Objects What It Brought With It The Means Of Seeing."

Science Must Have Originated In The Feeling That Something Was Wrong.

Conviction Never So Excellent, Is Worthless Until It Coverts Itself Into Conduct.

All True Work Is Sacred. In All True Work, Were It But True Hand Work, There Is Something Of Divineness. Labor, Wide As The Earth, Has Its Summit In Heaven.

No Iron Chain, Or Outward Force Of Any Kind, Could Ever Compel The Soul Of Man To Believe Or To Disbelieve: It Is His Own Indefeasible Light, That Judgment Of His; He Will Reign And Believe There By The Grace Of God Alone!

Learn To Be Good Readers, Which Is Perhaps A More Difficult Thing Than You Imagine. Learn To Be Discriminative In Your Reading; To Read Faithfully, And With Your Best Attention, All Kinds Of Things Which You Have A Real Interest In,--a Real, Not An Imaginary,--and Which You Find To Be Really Fit For What You Are Engaged In.

This We Take It Is The Grand Characteristic Of Our Age. By Our Skill In Mechanism, It Has Come To Pass, That In The Management Ofexternal Things We Excel All Other Ages; While In Whatever Respects The Pure Moral Nature, In True Dignity Of Soul And Character, We Are Perhaps Inferior To Most Civilised Ages.

In Every Phenomenon The Beginning Remains Always The Most Notable Moment.

We Have Not Read An Author Till We Have Seen His Object, Whatever It May Be, As He Saw It.

The Only Happiness A Brave Person Ever Troubles Themselves In Asking About, Is Happiness Enough To Get Their Work Done.

Nothing Stops The Man Who Desires To Achieve. Every Obstacle Is Simply A Course To Develop His Achievement Muscle. It's A Strengthening Of His Powers Of Accomplishment.

No Man At Bottom Means Injustice; It Is Always For Some Obscure Distorted Image Of A Right That He Contends: An Obscure Image Diffracted, Exaggerated, In The Wonderfulest Way By Natural Dimness And Selfishness; Getting Tenfold More Diffracted By Exasperation Of Contest, Till At Length It Become All But Irrecognis-able.

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.

Speech Is Of Time, Silence Is Of Eternity.

Skepticism Means, Not Intellectual Doubt Alone, But Moral Doubt.

Men Are To Be Guided Only By Their Self-interests. Good Government Is A Good Balancing Of These; And, Except A Keen Eye And Appetite For Self-interest, Requires No Virtue In Any Quarter. To Both Parties It Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented, A Taxing-machine; To The Contented, A Machine For Securing Property. Its Duties And Its Faults Are Not Those Of A Father, But Of An Active Parish-constable.

The Healthy Know Not Of Their Health, But Only The Sick: This Is The Physician's Aphorism, And Applicable In A Far Wider Sense Than He Gives It.

The Civil Authority, Or That Part Of It Which Remained Faithful To Their Trust And True To The Ends Of The Covenant, Did, In Answer To Their Consciences, Turn Out A Tyrant, In A Way Which The Christians In Aftertimes Will Mention With Honor, And All Tyrants In The World Look At With Fear.

I Never Heard Tell Of Any Clever Man That Came Of Entirely Stupid People.

Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom.

No Iron Chain, Or Outward Force Of Any Kind, Can Ever Compel The Soul Of A Person To Believe Or To Disbelieve.

No Pressure, No Diamonds.

Silence Is More Eloquent Than Words.

The Mystery Of A Person, Indeed, Is Ever Divine To Him That Has A Sense For The Godlike.

I Grow Daily To Honor Facts More And More, And Theory Less And Less.

Respectable Professors Of The Dismal Science.

Under All Speech That Is Good For Anything There Lies A Silence That Is Better, Silence Is Deep As Eternity; Speech Is Shallow As Time.

To The Vulgar Eye, Few Things Are Wonderful That Are Not Distant

Might And Right Do Differ Frightfully From Hour To Hour, But Then Centuries To Try It In, They Are Found To Be Identical.

If You Look Deep Enough You Will See Music; The Heart Of Nature Being Everywhere Music.

Roguery Is Thought By Some To Be Cunning And Laughable: It Is Neither; It Is Devilish.

Do The Duty Which Lies Nearest To You, The Second Duty Will Then Become Clearer.

Speech That Leads Not To Action, Still More That Hinders It, Is A Nuisance On The Earth.

Let Him Who Gropes Painfully In Darkness Or Uncertain Light, And Prays Vehemently That The Dawn May Ripen Into Day, Lay This Precept Well To Heart: "do The Duty Which Lies Nearest To Thee," Which Thou Know To Be A Duty! Thy Second Duty Will Already Have Become Clearer.

All Evil Is Like A Nightmare; The Instant You Stir Under It, The Evil Is Gone.

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?

How Indestructibly The Good Grows, And Propagates Itself, Even Among The Weedy Entanglements Of Evil.

The Condition Of The Most Passionate Enthusiast Is To Be Preferred Over The Individual Who, Because Of The Fear Of Making A Mistake, Won't In The End Affirm Or Deny Anything

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.

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.

Great Souls Are Always Loyally Submissive, Reverent To What Is Over Them: Only Small Mean Souls Are Otherwise.

Music Is Well Said To Be The Speech Of Angels.

All History . . . Is An Inarticulate Bible.

Music... A Kind Of Inarticulate, Unfathomable Speech, Which Leads To The Edge Of The Infinite.

I Want To Meet My God Awake.

War Is A Quarrel Between Two Thieves Too Cowardly To Fight Their Own Battle.

Labor, Wide As The Earth, Has Its Summit In Heaven.

They Only Are Wise Who Know That They Know Nothing.

Look To Be Treated By Others As You Have Treated Others.

Writing Is A Dreadful Labor, Yet Not So Dreadful As Idleness.

A Background Of Wrath, Which Can Be Stirred Up To The Murderous Infernal Pitch, Does Lie In Every Man.

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!

Neither Let Mistakes And Wrong Directions - Of Which Every Man, In His Studies And Elsewhere, Falls Into Many - Discourage You. There Is Precious Instruction To Be Got By Finding That We Are Wrong. Let A Man Try Faithfully, Manfully To Be Right, He Will Grow Daily More And More Right. It Is, At Bottom, The Condition Which All Men Have To Cultivate Themselves. Our Very Walking Is An Incessant Falling - A Falling And A Catching Of Ourselves Before We Come Actually To The Pavement! - It Is Emblematic Of All Things A Man Does.

Experience Of Actual Fact Either Teaches Fools Or Abolishes Them.

There Are Female Dandies As Well As Clothes-wearing Men; And The Former Are As Objectionable As The Latter.

Silence, The Great Empire Of Silence: Higher Than All Stars; Deeper Than The Kingdom Of Death! It Alone Is Great; All Else Is Small.

Poetry Is The Attempt Which Man Makes To Render His Existence Harmonious.

To Be True Is Manly, Chivalrous, Christian; To Be False Is Mean, Cowardly, Devilish.

The True Eye For Talent Presupposes The True Reverence For It.

The Lightning Spark Of Thought Generated In The Solitary Mind Awakens Its Likeness In Another Mind.

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.

Is There No God, Then, But At Best An Absentee God, Sitting Idle, Ever Since The First Sabbath, At The Outside Of His Universe?

Stern Accuracy In Inquiring, Bold Imagination In Describing, These Are The Cogs On Which History Soars Or Flutters And Wobbles.

Biography Is The Most Universally Pleasant And Profitable Of All Reading.

The Greatest Fault Is To Be Conscious Of None.

Well Might The Ancients Make Silence A God; For It Is The Element Of All Godhood, Infinitude, Or Transcendental Greatness,--at Once The Source And The Ocean Wherein All Such Begins And Ends.

A Person With A Clear Purpose Will Make Progress, Even On The Roughest Road. A Person With No Purpose Will Make No Progress, Even On The Smoothest Road.

It Is The First Of All Problems For A Man To Find Out What Kind Of Work He Is To Do In This Universe.

An Everlasting Lodestar, That Beams The Brighter In The Heavens The Darker Here On Earth Grows The Night.

Heroes Have Gone Out; Quacks Have Come In; The Reign Of Quacks Has Not Ended With The Nineteenth Century. The Sceptre Is Held With A Firmer Grasp; The Empire Has A Wider Boundary. We Are All The Slaves Of Quackery In One Shape Or Another. Indeed, One Portion Of Our Being Is Always Playing The Successful Quack To The Other.

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.

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.

The Ideal Is In Thyself, The Impediments Too Is In Thyself.

It Is Not A Lucky Word, This Name Impossible; No Good Comes Of Those Who Have It So Often In Their Mouths.

Properly Speaking, All True Work Is Religion.

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.

The Whole Past Is The Procession Of The Present.

The Cut Of A Garment Speaks Of Intellect And Talent And The Color Of Temperament And Heart.

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.

It Is Meritorious To Insist On Forms; Religion And All Else Naturally Clothes Itself In Forms. Everywhere The Formed World Is The Only Habitable One.

Fame, We May Understand, Is No Sure Test Of Merit, But Only A Probability Of Such: It Is An Accident, Not A Property, Of A Man; Like Light, It Can Give Little Or Nothing, But At Most May Show What Is Given.

Whose School-hours Are All The Days And Nights Of Our Existence.

Know What Thou Canst Work At, And Work At It Like A Hercules.

He Who Has No Vision Of Eternity Has No Hold On Time.

Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth To Do, Do That With All Thy Might And Leave The Issues Calmly To God.

Laws Themselves, Political Constitutions, Are Not Our Life; But Only The House Wherein Our Life Is Led.

The Courage We Desire And Prize Is Not The Courage To Die Decently, But To Live Manfully.

A Collection Of Books Is The Best Of All Universities.

What Are Your Axioms, And Categories, And Systems, And Aphorisms? Words, Words.... Be Not The Slave Of Words.

Scarcely Two Hundred Years Back Can Fame Recollect Articulately At All; And There She But Maunders And Mumbles.

Innumerable Are The Illusions And Legerdemain-tricks Of Custom: But Of All Of These, Perhaps The Cleverest Is Her Knack Of Persuading Us That The Miraculous, By Simple Repetition, Ceases To Be Miraculous.

Does It Ever Give Thee Pause That Men Used To Have A Soul? Not By Hearsay Alone, Or As A Figure Of Speech, But As A Thruth That They Knew And Acted Upon. Verily It Was Another World Then, But Yet It Is A Pity We Have Lost The Tidings Of Our Souls. We Shall Have To Go In Search Of Them Again Or Worse In All Ways Shall Befall Us.

Lives The Man That Can Figure A Naked Duke Of Windlestraw Addressing A Naked House Of Lords?

History Is A Mighty Dramos, Enacted Upon The Theatre Of Times, With Suns For Lamps And Eternity For A Background.

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?

Is Not Every Meanest Day The Confluence Of Two Eternities?

Endurance Is Patience Concentrated.

The Latest Gospel In This World Is, Know Thy Work And Do It.

That A Parliament, Especially A Parliament With Newspaper Reporters Firmly Established In It, Is An Entity Which By Its Very Nature Cannot Do Work, But Can Do Talk Only.

Neither In Tailoring Nor In Legislating Does Man Proceed By Mere Accident.

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.

The Coldest Word Was Once A Glowing New Metaphor.

Show Me The Man You Honor, And I Will Know What Kind Of Man You Are.

Hero-worship Is The Deepest Root Of All; The Tap-root, From Which In A Great Degree All The Rest Were Nourished And Grown . . . Worship Of A Hero Is Transcendent Admiration Of A Great Man. I Say Great Men Are Still Admirable; I Say There Is, At Bottom, Nothing Else Admirable! No Nobler Feeling Than This Of Admiration For One Higher Than Himself Dwells In The Breast Of Men.

Once Turn To Practice, Error And Truth Will No Longer Consort Together.

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.

The Fine Arts Once Divorcing Themselves From Truth Are Quite Certain To Fall Mad, If They Do Not Die.

Habit And Imitation--there Is Nothing More Perennial In Us Than These Two. They Are The Source Of All Working, And All Apprenticeship, Of All Practice, And All Learning, In This World.

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books.

Of All Acts Of Man Repentance Is The Most Divine. The Greatest Of All Faults Is To Be Conscious Of None.

Repentance And Forgiveness

Language Is Called The Garment Of Thought: However, It Should Rather Be, Language Is The Flesh-garment, The Body, Of Thought.

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.

Weak Eyes Are Fondest Of Glittering Objects.

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?

What Is Philosophy But A Continual Battle Against Custom?

Unity, Agreement, Is Always Silent Or Soft-voiced; It Is Only Discord That Loudly Proclaims Itself.

A Man Must Indeed Be A Hero To Appear Such In The Eyes Of His Valet.

Ill-health, Of Body Or Of Mind, Is Defeat. Health Alone Is Victory. Let All Men, If They Can Manage It, Contrive To Be Healthy!

The Essence Of Humor Is Sensibility; Warm, Tender Fellow-feeling With All Forms Of Existence.

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."

History Is A Great Dust Heap.

What An Enormous Magnifier Is Tradition! How A Thing Grows In The Human Memory And In The Human Imagination, When Love, Worship, And All That Lies In The Human Heart, Is There To Encourage It

Blessed Is He Who Has Found His Work; Let Him Ask No Other Blessedness.

No Man Is Born Without Ambitious Worldly Desires.

A Poor Creature Who Has Said Or Done Nothing Worth A Serious Man Taking The Trouble Of Remembering.

All Great Peoples Are Conservative.

If A Book Comes From The Heart, It Will Contrive To Reach Other Hearts; All Art And Author-craft Are Of Small Amount To That.

Parliament Will Train You To Talk; And Above All Things To Hear, With Patience, Unlimited Quantities Of Foolish Talk.

O Poor Mortals, How Ye Make This Earth Bitter For Each Other.

My Books Are Friends That Never Fail Me.

There Is Often More Spiritual Force In A Proverb Than In Whole Philosophical Systems.

It Is The Heart Always That Sees, Before The Head Can See.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

The First Duty Of Man Is That Of Subduing Fear.

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.

The Nobleness Of Silence. The Highest Melody Dwells Only In Silence,--the Sphere Melody, The Melody Of Health.

Freedom Is The One Purport, Wisely Aimed At, Or Unwisely, Of All Man's Struggles, Toilings And Sufferings, In This Earth.

A Force As Of Madness In The Hands Of Reason Has Done All That Was Ever Done In The World.

Thought Will Not Work Except In Silence.

In A Certain Sense All Men Are Historians.

The Weakest Living Creature, By Concentrating His Powers On A Single Object, Can Accomplish Something. The Strongest, By Dispensing His Over Many, May Fail To Accomplish Anything. The Drop, By Continually Falling, Bores Its Passage Through The Hardest Rock. The Hasty Torrent Rushes Over It With Hideous Uproar, And Leaves No Trace Behind.

The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.

O Time! Time! How It Brings Forth And Devours! And The Roaring Flood Of Existence Rushes On Forever Similar, Forever Changing!

Rest Is A Fine Medicine. Let Your Stomachs Rest, Ye Dyspeptics; Let Your Brain Rest, You Wearied And Worried People Of Business; Let Your Limbs Rest, Ye Children Of Toil!

In The Huge Mass Of Evil As It Rolls And Swells, There Is Ever Some Good Working Toward Deliverance And Triumph.

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!

Of All Your Troubles, Great And Small, The Greatest Are The Ones That Don't Happen At All.

Worship Is Transcendent Wonder.

But Deepest Of All Illusory Appearances, For Hiding Wonder, As For Many Other Ends, Are Your Two Grand Fundamental World-enveloping Appearances, Space And Time. These, As Spun And Woven For Us From Before Birth Itself, To Clothe Our Celestial Me For Dwelling Here, And Yet To Blind It, Lie All-embracing, As The Universal Canvas, Or Warp And Woof, Whereby All Minor Illusions, In This Phantasm Existence, Weave And Paint Themselves. In Vain, While Here On Earth, Shall You Endeavor To Strip Them Off; You Can, At Best, But Rend Them Asunder For Moments, And Look Through.

Feel It In Thy Heart And Then Say Whether It Is Of God!

All Work Of Man Is As The Swimmer's: A Vast Ocean Threatens To Devour Him; If He Front It Not Bravely, It Will Keep Its Word.

The End Of Man Is Action.

Conviction Is Worthless Unless It Is Converted Into Conduct.

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.

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!

Enjoying Things Which Are Pleasant; That Is Not The Evil; It Is The Reducing Of Our Moral Self To Slavery By Them That Is.

Hero-worship Exists, Has Existed, And Will Forever Exist, Universally, Among Mankind.

He That Has Done Nothing Has Known Nothing.

The Greatest Security Against Sin Is To Be Shocked At Its Presence.

Stop A Moment, Cease Your Work, And Look Around You.

Of All The Paths A Man Could Strike Into, There Is, At Any Given Moment, A Best Path .. A Thing Which, Here And Now, It Were Of All Things Wisest For Him To Do .. To Find This Path, And Walk In It, Is The One Thing Needful For Him.

The Fearful Unbelief Is Unbelief In Yourself.

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.

The Merit Of Originality Is Not Novelty; It Is Sincerity.

Love Not Pleasure; Love God.

At Worst, Is Not This An Unjust World, Full Of Nothing But Beasts Of Prey, Four-footed Or Two-footed?

The Infinite, Absolute Character Of Virtue Has Passed Into A Finite, Conditional One; It Is No Longer A Worship Of The Beautiful And Good; But A Calculation Of The Profitable.

With Union Grounded On Falsehood And Ordering Us To Speak And Act Lies, We Will Not Have Anything To Do. Peace? A Brutal Lethargy Is Peaceable; The Noisome Is Peaceable. We Hope For A Living Peace, Not A Dead One!

Courtesy Is The Due Of Man To Man; Not Of Suit-of-clothes To Suit-of-clothes.

Poetry, Therefore, We Will Call Musical Thought.

Out Of The Lowest Depths There Is A Path To The Loftiest Heights.

If A Man Was Great While Living, He Becomes Tenfold Greater When Dead.

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.

Reality, If Rightly Interpreted, Is Grander Than Fiction.

Not Brute Force But Only Persuasion And Faith Are The Kings Of This World.

But The Whim We Have Of Happiness Is Somewhat Thus. By Certain Valuations, And Averages, Of Our Own Striking, We Come Upon Some Sort Of Average Terrestrial Lot; This We Fancy Belongs To Us By Nature, And Of Indefeasible Rights. It Is Simple Payment Of Our Wages, Of Our Deserts; Requires Neither Thanks Nor Complaint. Foolish Soul! What Act Of Legislature Was There That Thou Shouldst Be Happy? A Little While Ago Thou Hadst No Right To Be At All.

Men Seldom, Or Rather Never For A Length Of Time And Deliberately, Rebel Against Anything That Does Not Deserve Rebelling Against.

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?

Love Is The Only Game That Is Not Called On Account Of Darkness.

Society Is Founded Upon Cloth.

The Greatest Mistake Is To Imagine That We Never Err.

One Monster There Is In The World, The Idle Man.

Alas! While The Body Stands So Broad And Brawny, Must The Soul Lie Blinded, Dwarfed, Stupefied, Almost Annihilated? Alas! This Was, Too, A Breath Of God, Bestowed In Heaven, But On Earth Never To Be Unfolded!

Social Science, Is Not A 'gay Science' But Rueful, Which Finds The Secret Of This Universe In 'supply And Demand' And Reduces The Duty Of Human Governors To That Of Letting Men Alone. Not A 'gay Science', No, A Dreary, Desolate, And Indeed Quite Abject And Distressing One; What We Might Call, The Dismal Science

Heroism Is The Divine Relation Which, In All Times, Unites A Great Man To Other Men.

I Have Seen Gleams In The Face And Eyes Of The Man That Have Let You Look Into A Higher Country.

Adversity Is The Diamond Dust Heaven Polishes Its Jewels With.

Custom Doth Make Dotards Of Us All.

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.

Self-contemplation Is Infallibly The Symptom Of Disease.

The Glory Of A Workman, Still More Of A Master Workman, That He Does His Work Well, Ought To Be His Most Precious Possession; Like The Honor Of A Soldier, Dearer To Him Than Life.

When New Turns Of Behavior Cease To Appear In The Life Of The Individual, Its Behavior Ceases To Be Intelligent.

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.

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.

There Is A Majesty And Mystery In Nature, Take Her As You Will. The Essence Of Poetry Comes Breathing To A Mind That Feels From Every Province Of Her Empire.

The Devil Has His Elect.

Teach A Parrot The Terms 'supply And Demand' And You've Got An Economist.

Once The Mind Has Been Expanded By A Big Idea, It Will Never Go Back To Its Original State.

That Great Mystery Of Time, Were There No Other; The Illimitable, Silent, Never-resting Thing Called Time, Rolling, Rushing On, Swift, Silent, Like An All-embracing Ocean Tide, On Which We And All The Universe Swim Like Exhalations, Like Apparitions Which Are, And Then Are Not: This Is Forever Very Literally A Miracle; A Thing To Strike Us Dumb,-for We Have No Word To Speak About It.

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