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If You Are Looking At Data Over And Over You Better Be Taking Away Valuable Insight Every Time. If You Are Constantly Looking At Data That Isn't Leading To Strategic Action Stop Wasting Your Time And Look For More Actionable Analytics.

-Thomas Carlyle

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If You Are Looking

Thomas Carlyle

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If You Are Looking At Data Over And Over You Better Be Taking Away Valuable Insight Every Time. If You Are Constantly Looking At Data That Isn't Leading To Strategic Action Stop Wasting Your Time And Look For More Actionable Analytics.

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Democracy Will Itself Accomplish The Salutary Universal Change From Delusive To Real, And Make A New Blessed World Of Us By And By.

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.

Authors Are The Vanguard In The March Of Mind, The Intellectual Backwoodsmen, Reclaiming From The Idle Wilderness New Territories For The Thought And Activity Of Their Happier Brethren.

The Errors Of A Wise Man Are Literally More Instructive Than The Truths Of A Fool. The Wise Man Travels In Lofty, Far-seeing Regions; The Fool In Low-lying, High-fenced Lanes; Retracing The Footsteps Of The Former, To Discover Where He Diviated, Whole Provinces Of The Universe Are Laid Open To Us; In The Path Of The Latter, Granting Even That He Has Not Deviated At All, Little Is Laid Open To Us But Two Wheel-ruts And Two Hedges.

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

Repentance And Forgiveness

Egotism Is The Source And Summary Of All Faults And Miseries.

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!

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

Nature Is The Time-vesture Of God That Reveals Him To The Wise, And Hides Him From The Foolish.

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

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

Fire Is The Best Of Servants, But What A Master!

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.

Bricks And Mortar

History Is A Great Dust Heap.

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.

Thought Will Not Work Except In Silence.

The Person Who Cannot Laugh Is Not Only Ready For Treason, And Deceptions, Their Whole Life Is Already A Treason And Deception.

Wondrous Is The Strength Of Cheerfulness, And Its Power Of Endurance - The Cheerful Man Will Do More In The Same Time, Will Do It; Better, Will Preserve It Longer, Than The Sad Or Sullen.

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.

Laughter Means Sympathy.

In Idleness There Is A Perpetual Despair.

Metaphysics Is The Attempt Of The Mind To Rise Above The Mind.

He That Works And Does Some Poem, Not He That Merely Says One, Is Worthy Of The Name Of Poet.

Man Is A Tool-using Animal. Without Tools He Is Nothing, With Tools He Is All.

Every Man Has A Coward And Hero In His Soul.

He Who Talks Much About Virtue In The Abstract, Begins To Be Suspected; It Is Shrewdly Guessed That Where There Is Great Preaching There Will Be Little Almsgiving.

The Great Soul Of This World Is Just.

The Aristocracy Of Feudal Parchment Has Passed Away With A Mighty Rushing, And Now, By A Natural Course, We Arrive At Aristocracy Of The Money-bag.

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!

Man Is, Properly Speaking, Based Upon Hope, He Has No Other Possession But Hope; This World Of His Is Emphatically The Place Of Hope.

Books Are A Triviality. Life Alone Is Great.

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.

There Is A Perennial Nobleness, And Even Sacredness, In Work. Were He Never So Benighted, Forgetful Of His High Calling, There Is Always Hope In A Man That Actually And Earnestly Works: In Idleness Alone There Is Perpetual Despair.

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

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.

These Arabs, The Man Mahomet, And That One Century, - Is It Not As If A Spark Had Fallen, One Spark, On A World Of What Proves Explosive Powder, Blazes Heaven-high From Delhi To Granada! I Said, The Great Man Was Always As Lightning Out Of Heaven; The Rest Of Men Waited For Him Like Fuel, And Then They Too Would Flame.

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

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.

Man, It Is Not Thy Works, Which Are Mortal, Infinitely Little, And The Greatest No Greater Than The Least, But Only The Spirit Thou Workest In, That Can Have Worth Or Continuance.

Speak Not At All, In Any Wise, Till You Have Somewhat To Speak; Care Not For The Reward Of Your Speaking, But Simply And With Undivided Mind For The Truth Of Your Speaking.

It Is Not To Taste Sweet Things; But To Do Noble And True Things, And Vindicate Himself Under God's Heaven As A God-made Man, That The Poorest Son Of Adam Dimly Longs. Show Him The Way Of Doing That, The Dullest Day-drudge Kindles Into A Hero. 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. Kindle The Inner Genial Life Of Him, You Have A Flame That Burns Up All Lower Considerations.

To Know, To Get Into The Truth Of Anything, Is Ever A Mystic Art, Of Which The Best Logic's Can But Babble On The Surface.

The Scandalous Bronze-lacquer Age Of Hungry Animalisms, Spiritual Impotences, And Mendacities, Will Have To Run Its Course, Till The Pit Follow It.

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

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

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

Obedience Is Our Universal Duty And Destiny; Wherein Whoso Will Not Bend Must Break; Too Early And Too Thoroughly We Cannot Be Trained To Know That "would," In This World Of Ours, Is A Mere Zero To "should," And For Most Part As The Smallest Of Fractions Even To "shall.

The Deadliest Sin Were The Consciousness Of No Sin

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.

Song Is The Heroics Of Speech.

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

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

A Man's Felicity Consists Not In The Outward And Visible Blessing Of Fortune, But In The Inward And Unseen Perfections And Riches Of The Mind.

In Every Object There Is Inexhaustible Meaning.

Lord Bacon Could As Easily Have Created The Planets As He Could Have Written Hamlet.

Debt Is A Bottomless Sea.

Quackery Gives Birth To Nothing; Gives Death To All Things.

To Us Also, Through Every Star, Through Every Blade Of Grass, Is Not God Made Visible If We Will Open Our Minds And Our Eyes.

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

Work Is The Grand Cure Of All The Maladies And Miseries That Ever Beset Mankind.

In A Certain Sense All Men Are Historians.

The Grand Result Of Schooling Is A Mind With Just Vision To Discern, With Free Force To Do: The Grand Schoolmaster Is Practice.

Great Men Are The Commissioned Guides Of Mankind, Who Rule Their Fellows Because They Are Wiser.

O Thou Who Art Able To Write A Book, Which Once In The Two Centuries Or Oftener There Is A Man Gifted To Do, Envy Not Him Whom They Name City-builder, And Inexpressibly Pity Him Whom They Name Conqueror Or City-burner! Thou Too Art A Conqueror And Victor; But Of The True Sort, Namely Over The Devil: Thou Too Hast Built What Will Outlast All Marble And Metal, And Be A Wonder-bringing City Of The Mind, A Temple And Seminary And Prophetic Mount, Whereto All Kindreds Of The Earth Will Pilgrim.

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.

Society Is Founded On Hero-worship.

The English Are A Dumb People. They Can Do Great Acts, But Not Describe Them.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

There Is So Much Data Available To Us, But Most Data Won't Help Us Succeed.

Make Yourself An Honest Man, And Then You May Be Sure There Is One Less Rascal In The World.

Not What You Possess But What You Do With What You Have, Determines Your True Worth.

Overconsumption

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.

In Private Life I Never Knew Anyone Interfere With Other People's Disputes But He Heartily Repented Of It.

There Are But Two Ways Of Paying Debt: Increase Of Industry In Raising Income, Increase Of Thrift In Laying Out.

Weak Eyes Are Fondest Of Glittering Objects.

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!

In Every Object There Is Inexhaustible Meaning; The Eye Sees In It What The Eye Brings Means Of Seeing.

The True Sovereign Of The World, Who Moulds The World Like Soft Wax, According To His Pleasure, Is He Who Lovingly Sees Into The World.

If You Do Not Wish A Man To Do A Thing, You Had Better Get Him To Talk About It; For The More Men Talk, The More Likely They Are To Do Nothing Else.

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

Do Nothing, Only Keep Agitating, Debating; And Things Will Destroy Themselves.

I Don't Pretend To Understand The Universe - It's A Great Deal Bigger Than I Am.

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?

The Work An Unknown Good Man Has Done Is Like A Vein Of Water Flowing Hidden Underground, Secretly Making The Ground Green.

Only The Person Of Worth Can Recognize The Worth In Others.

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.

All Destruction, By Violent Revolution Or However It Be, Is But New Creation On A Wider Scale.

Narrative Is Linear, But Action Has Breadth And Depth As Well As Height And Is Solid.

In Books Lies The Soul Fo The Whole Past Time.

Nature Admits No Lie.

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.

Is Not Light Grander Than Fire?

O Heaven, It Is Mysterious, It Is Awful To Consider That We Not Only Carry Each A Future Ghost Within Him; But Are, In Very Deed, Ghosts!

The First Sin In Our Universe Was Lucifer's Self Conceit.

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.

In Our Wide World There Is But One Altogether Fatal Personage, The Dunce,--he That Speaks Irrationally, That Sees Not, And Yet Thinks He Sees.

That Monstrous Tuberosity Of Civilised Life, The Capital Of England.

There Are Depths In Man That Go To The Lowest Hell, And Heights That Reach The Highest Heaven, For Are Not Both Heaven And Hell Made Out Of Him, Everlasting Miracle And Mystery That He Is.

A Witty Statesman Said, You Might Prove Anything By Figures.

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.

The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

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

Necessity Dispenseth With Decorum.

History Is Philosophy Teaching By Experience.

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.

The Mystical Bond Of Brotherhood Makes All Men Brothers.

Permanence, Perseverance And Persistence In Spite Of All Obstacle S, Discouragement S, And Impossibilities: It Is This, That In All Things Distinguishes The Strong Soul From The Weak.

God Almighty Never Created A Man Half As Wise As He Looks.

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

Woe To Him That Claims Obedience When It Is Not Due; Woe To Him That Refuses It When It Is.

Not Only Was Thebes Built By The Music Of An Orpheus; But Without The Music Of Some Inspired Orpheus Was No City Ever Built, No Work That Man Glories In Ever Done.

How Great A Possibility, How Small A Realized Result.

It Is A Strange Trade That Of Advocacy. Your Intellect, Your Highest Heavenly Gift Is Hung Up In The Shop Window Like A Loaded Pistol For Sale.

There Is Precious Instruction To Be Got By Finding We Were Wrong.

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

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.

He Who First Shortened The Labor Of Copyists By Device Of Movable Types Was Disbanding Hired Armies And Cashiering Most Kings And Senates, And Creating A Whole New Democratic World: He Had Invented The Art Of Printing.

To Say That We Have A Clear Conscience Is To Utter A Solecism; Had We Never Sinned We Should Have Had No Conscience. Were Defeat Unknown, Neither Would Victory Be Celebrated By Songs Of Triumph.

Every Poet, Be His Outward Lot What It May, Finds Himself Born In The Midst Of Prose; H E Has To Struggle From The Littleness And Obstruction Of An Actual World Into The Freedom And Infinitude Of An Ideal.

Not Our Logical, Mensurative Faculty, But Our Imaginative One Is King Over Us; I Might Say, Priest And Prophet To Lead Us Heavenward; Or Magician And Wizard To Lead Us Hellward.

Good Christian People, Here Lies For You An Inestimable Loan; Take All Heed Thereof, In All Carefulness, Employ It: With High Recompense, Or Else With Heavy Penalty, Will It One Day Be Required Back.

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.

No Person Was Every Rightly Understood Until They Had Been First Regarded With A Certain Feeling, Not Of Tolerance, But Of Sympathy.

Naps Are A Way Of Traveling Painlessly Through Time Into The Future.

Experience Is The Best Of School Masters, Only The School Fees Are Heavy.

I Know So Little About Any History. How Little Do I Know Even About The History Of Myself.

Work Earnestly At Anything, You Will By Degrees Learn To Work At All Things.

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.

Every Man Is My Superior In That I May Learn From Him.

Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.

No Man Sees Far, Most See No Farther Than Their Noses.

Why Tell Me That A Man Is A Fine Speaker, If It Is Not The Truth That He Is Speaking?

Faith Is Loyalty To Some Inspired Teacher, Some Spiritual Hero.

Histories Are A Kind Of Distilled Newspapers.

If Jesus Christ Were To Come Today, People Would Not Even Crucify Him. They Would Ask Him To Dinner, And Hear What He Had To Say, And Make Fun Of It.

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

Goethe's Devil Is A Cultivated Personage And Acquainted With The Modern Sciences; Sneers At Witchcraft And The Black Art Even While Employing Them, And Doubts Most Things, Nay, Half Disbelieves Even His Own Existence.

There Is Always Hope In A Man That Actually And Earnestly Works: In Idleness Alone Is There Perpetual Despair.

A Great Man Shows His Greatness By The Way He Treats Little Men.

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

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

May Blessings Be Upon The Head Of Cadmus, The Phoenicians, Or Whoever It Was That Invented Books.

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.

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.

There Is No Heroic Poem In The World But Is At Bottom A Biography, The Life Of A Man.

Men Worship The Shows Of Great Men; The Most Disbelieve That There Is Any Reality Of Great Men To Worship.

How, Without Clothes, Could We Possess The Master Organ, Soul's Seat And True Pineal Gland Of The Body Social--i Mean A Purse?

Rich As We Are In Biography, A Well-written Life Is Almost As Rare As A Well-spent One; And There Are Certainly Many More Men Whose History Deserves To Be Recorded Than Persons Willing And Able To Record It.

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. It Is Character Which Builds An Existence Out Of Circumstance. From The Same Materials One Man Builds Palaces, Another Hovels; One Warehouses, Another Villas; Bricks And Mortar Are Mortar And Bricks Until The Architect Can Make Them Something Else.

Bricks And Mortar

Everywhere In Life, The True Question Is Not What We Gain, But What We Do.

The Old Cathedrals Are Good, But The Great Blue Dome That Hangs Over Everything Is Better.

There Is In Man A Higher Than Love Of Happiness; He Can Do Without Happiness, And Instead Thereof Find Blessedness.

I Grow Daily To Honour Facts More And More, And Theory Less And Less. A Fact, It Seems To Me, Is A Great Thing; A Sentence Printed, If Not By God, Then At Least By The Devil.

Love Is Ever The Beginning Of Knowledge As Fire Is Of Light.

Why Did Not Somebody Teach Me The Constellations, And Make Me At Home In The Starry Heavens, Which Are Always Overhead, And Which I Don't Half Know To This Day?

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.

One Is Hardly Sensible Of Fatigue While He Marches To Music.

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

Man's Unhappiness, As I Construe, Comes Of His Greatness; It Is Because There Is An Infinite In Him, With Which All His Cunning He Cannot Quite Bury Under The Finite... Try Him With Half Of A Universe, Of An Omnipotence, He Sets To Quarreling With The Proprietor Of The Other Half, And Declares Himself The Most Maltreated Of Men. Always There Is A Black Spot In Our Sunshine: It Is Even, As I Said, The Shadow Of Ourselves.

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

Long Stormy Spring-time, Wet Contentious April, Winter Chilling The Lap Of Very May; But At Length The Season Of Summer Does Come.

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.

He Who Would Write Heroic Poems Should Make His Whole Life A Heroic Poem.

What Are Your Historical Facts Still More Your Biographical Wilt Thou Know A Man By Stringing-together Beadrolls Of What Thou Namest Facts

High Air-castles Are Cunningly Built Of Words, The Words Well Bedded Also In Good Logic-mortar; Wherein, However, No Knowledge Will Come To Lodge.

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.

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

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.

To The Mean Eye All Things Are Trivial, As Certainly As To The Jaundiced They Are Yellow.

Worship Is Transcendent Wonder.

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

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.

Life Is A Series Of Lessons That Have To Be Understood.

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

The Goal Of Yesterday Will Be Our Starting-point To-morrow.

Virtue Is Like Health: The Harmony Of The Whole Man.

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

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.

It Is A Vain Hope To Make People Happy By Politics.

Force, Force, Everywhere Force; We Ourselves A Mysterious Force In The Centre Of That. "there Is Not A Leaf Rotting On The Highway But Has Force In It: How Else Could It Rot?" [as Used In His Time, By The Word Force, Carlyle Means Energy.]

A Word Spoken In Season, At The Right Moment; Is The Mother Of Ages.

There Is No Permanent Place In This Universe For Evil... Evil May Hide Behind This Fallacy And That, But It Will Be Hunted From Fallacy To Fallacy Until There Is No More Fallacy For It To Hide Behind.

Great Men Are The Inspired Texts Of That Divine Book Of Revelations, Whereof A Chapter Is Completed From Epoch To Epoch, And By Some Named History.

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.

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

Poetry, Therefore, We Will Call Musical Thought.

When The Oak Is Felled The Whole Forest Echoes With It Fall, But A Hundred Acorns Are Sown In Silence By An Unnoticed Breeze.

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.

Providence Has Given To The French The Empire Of The Land, To The English That Of The Sea, To The Germans That Of--the Air!

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!

Man's Unhappiness, As I Construe, Comes Of His Greatness; It Is Because There Is An Infinite In Him, Which With All His Cunning He Cannot Quite Bury Under The Finite.

Over The Times Thou Hast No Power. . . . Solely Over One Man Thou Hast Quite Absolute Power. Him Redeem And Make Honest.

We Are To Take No Counsel With Flesh And Blood; Give Ear To No Vain Cavils, Vain Sorrows And Wishes; To Know That We Know Nothing, That The Worst And Cruelest To Our Eyes Is Not What It Seems, That We Have To Receive Whatsoever Befalls Us As Sent From God Above, And Say, "it Is Good And Wise,--god Is Great! Though He Slay Me, Yet I Trust In Him." Islam Means, In Its Way, Denial Of Self. This Is Yet The Highest Wisdom That Heaven Has Revealed To Our Earth.

What, In The Devil's Name, Is The Use Of Respectability, With Never So Many Gigs And Silver Spoons, If Thou Inwardly Art The Pitifulness Of All Men?

Speech Is Great, But Silence Is Greater.

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.

What We Become Depends On What We Read After All Of The Professors Have Finished With Us. The Greatest University Of All Is A Collection Of Books.

Our Grand Business Undoubtedly Is, Not To See What Lies Dimly At A Distance, But To Do What Lies Clearly At Hand.

Secrecy Is The Element Of All Goodness; Even Virtue, Even Beauty Is Mysterious.

Why Multiply Instances? It Is Written, The Heavens And The Earth Shall Fade Away Like A Vesture; Which Indeed They Are: The Time-vesture Of The Eternal. Whatsoever Sensibly Exists, Whatsoever Represents Spirit To Spirit, Is Properly A Clothing, A Suit Of Raiment, Put On For A Season, And To Be Laid Off. Thus In This One Pregnant Subject Of Clothes, Rightly Understood, Is Included All That Men Have Thought, Dreamed, Done, And Been: The Whole External Universe And What It Holds Is But Clothing; And The Essence Of All Science Lies In The Philosophy Of Clothes.

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