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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.

-Thomas Carlyle

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In This World There

Thomas Carlyle

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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.

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Democracy Means Despair Of Finding Any Heroes To Govern You, And Contented Putting Up With The Want Of Them.

What A Wretched Thing Is All Fame! A Renown Of The Highest Sort Endures, Say, For Two Thousand Years. And Then? Why, Then, A Fathomless Eternity Swallows It. Work For Eternity; Not The Meagre Rhetorical Eternity Of The Periodical Critics, But For The Real Eternity Wherein Dwelleth The Divine.

They Only Are Wise Who Know That They Know Nothing.

The Orator Persuades And Carries All With Him, He Knows Not How; The Rhetorician Can Prove That He Ought To Have Persuaded And Carried All With Him.

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

History Is The New Poetry.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Want To Meet My God Awake.

Originality Is A Thing We Constantly Clamour For, And Constantly Quarrel With; As If, Observes Our Author Himself, Any Originality But Our Own Could Be Expected To Content Us! In Fact All Strange Thing Are Apt, Without Fault Of Theirs, To Estrange Us At First View, And Unhappily Scarcely Anything Is Perfectly Plain, But What Is Also Perfectly Common.

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

A Frightful Dialect For The Stupid, The Pedant And Dullard Sort.

No Ghost Was Every Seen By Two Pair Of Eyes.

Man Is Emphatically A Proselytizing Creature.

Silence Is The Element In Which Great Things Fashion Themselves Together.

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

Overconsumption

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

Time Is The Silent, Never-resting Thing ... Rolling, Rushing On, Swift, Silent, Like An All-embracing Oceantide, On Which We And All The Universe Swim.

A Dandy Is A Clothes-wearing Man--a Man Whose Trade, Office, And Existence Consist In The Wearing Of Clothes. Every Faculty Of His Soul, Spirit, Person And Purse Is Heroically Consecrated To This One Object--the Wearing Of Clothes, Wisely And Well; So That, As Others Dress To Live, He Lives To Dress.

The Outer Passes Away; The Innermost Is The Same Yesterday, Today, And Forever.

All History . . . Is An Inarticulate Bible.

Clever Men Are Good, But They Are Not The Best.

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.

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.

Nine-tenths Of The Miseries And Vices Of Mankind Proceed From Idleness.

Tobacco Smoke Is The One Element In Which, By Our European Manners, Men Can Sit Silent Together Without Embarrassment, And Where No Man Is Bound To Speak One Word More Than He Has Actually And Veritably Got To Say. Nay, Rather Every Man Is Admonished And Enjoined By The Laws Of Honor, And Even Of Personal Ease, To Stop Short Of That Point; And At All Events To Hold His Peace And Take To His Pipe Again The Instant He Has Spoken His Meaning, If He Chance To Have Any.

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.

Variety Is The Condition Of Harmony.

Wealth Of A Man Is The Number Of Things Which He Loves And Blesses Which He Is Loved And Blessed By.

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

All Comes Out Even At The End Of The Day.

The End Of The Day

Speech Is Human, Silence Is Divine, Yet Also Brutish And Dead: Therefore We Must Learn Both Arts.

To Believe Practically That The Poor And Luckless Are Here Only As A Nusiance To Be Abraded And Abated, And In Some Permissable Manner Made Away With, And Swept Out Of Sight, Is Not An Amiable Faith.

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

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

Consider In Fact, A Body Of Six Hundred And Fifty-eight Miscellaneous Persons, Set To Consult About "business," With Twenty-seven Millions, Mostly Fools, Assiduously Listening To Them, And Checking And Criticising Them. Was There Ever, Since The World Began, Will There Ever Be Till The World End, Any "business" Accomplished In These Circumstances?

All That A University Or Final Highest School. Can Do For Us Is Still But What The First School Began Doing--teach Us To Read. We Learn To Read In Various Languages, In Various Sciences; We Learn The Alphabet And Letters Of All Manner Of Books. But The Place Where We Are To Get Knowledge, Even Theoretic Knowledge, Is The Books Themselves. It Depends On What We Read, After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

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.

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.

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.

Nay, In Every Epoch Of The World, The Great Event, Parent Of All Others, Is It Not The Arrival Of A Thinker In The World?

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

Leaders: Captains Of Industry.

The Great Law Of Culture Is, Let Each Become All That He Was Created Capable Of Being; Expand, If Possible, To His Full Growth; Resisting All Impediments, Casting Off All Foreign, Especially All Noxious Adhesions, And Show Himself At Length In His Own Shape And Stature Be These What They May.

Also, What Mountains Of Dead Ashes, Wreck And Burnt Bones, Does Assiduous Pedantry Dig Up From The Past Time And Name It History.

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

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.

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

Nothing That Was Worthy In The Past Departs; No Truth Or Goodness Realized By Man Ever Dies, Or Can Die.

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

Is Man’s Civilization Only A Wrappage, Through Which The Savage Nature Of Him Can Still Burst, Infernal As Ever?

History Shows That The Majority Of People That Have Done Anything Great Have Passed Their Youth In Seclusion.

Eyes Bright, With Many Tears, Behind Them.

Humor Has Justly Been Regarded As The Finest Perfection Of Poetic Genius.

There Is But One Temple In This Universe: The Body. We Speak To God Whenever We Lay Our Hands Upon It.

The Greatest Event For The World Is The Arrival Of A New And Wise Person.

The Soul Gives Unity To What It Looks At With Love.

Statistics Is A Science Which Ought To Be Honourable, The Basis Of Many Most Important Sciences; But It Is Not To Be Carried On By Steam, This Science, Any More Than Others Are; A Wise Head Is Requisite For Carrying It On.

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.

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.

Great Is Journalism. Is Not Every Able Editor A Ruler Of The World, Being The Persuader Of It?

Dinners Are Defined As 'the Ultimate Act Of Communion;' Men That Can Have Communion In Nothing Else, Can Sympathetically Eat Together, Can Still Rise Into Some Glow Of Brotherhood Over Food And Wine.

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.

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.

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.

It's A Man's Sincerity And Depth Of Vision That Makes Him A Poet.

The Sincere Alone Can Recognize Sincerity.

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

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

There Must Be A New World If There Is To Be Any World At All!... These Days Of Universal Death Must Be Days Of Universal New Birth, If The Ruin Is Not To Be Total And Final! It Is Time To Make The Dullest Man Consider; And Ask Himself, Whence He Came? Whither He Is Bound?

All True Work Is Sacred.

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

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

Repentance And Forgiveness

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

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.

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!

The Tragedy Of Life Is Not So Much What Men Suffer, But Rather What They Miss.

Perfect Ignorance Is Quiet, Perfect Knowledge Is Quiet; Not So The Transition From The Former To The Latter.

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.

Men Do Less Than They Ought, Unless They Do All They Can.

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.

Have A Purpose In Life, And Having It, Throw Into Your Work Such Strength Of Mind And Muscle As God Has Given You.

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

In The Long-run Every Government Is The Exact Symbol Of Its People, With Their Wisdom And Unwisdom; We Have To Say, Like People Like Government.

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.

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.

Macaulay Is Well For Awhile, But One Wouldn't Live Under Niagara.

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

Hardened Round Us, Encasing Wholly Every Notion We Form Is A Wrapping Of Traditions, Hearsay's, And Mere Words.

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

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

"love Is Not Altogether A Delirium," Says He Elsewhere; "yet Has It Many Points In Common Therewith."

Delirium Tremens

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

A True Delineation Of The Smallest Man Is Capable Of Interesting The Greatest Man.

The Best Lesson Which We Get From The Tragedy Of Karbala Is That Husain And His Companions Were Rigid Believers In God. They Illustrated That The Numerical Superiority Does Not Count When It Comes To The Truth And The Falsehood. The Victory Of Husain, Despite His Minority, Marvels Me!

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.

The Authentic Insight And Experience Of Any Human Soul, Were It But Insight And Experience In Hewing Of Wood And Drawing Of Water, Is Real Knowledge, A Real Possession And Acquirement.

No Mortal Has A Right To Wag His Tongue, Much Less To Wag His Pen, Without Saying Something.

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

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.

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.

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.

Is Not Every Meanest Day The Confluence Of Two Eternities?

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?

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

When I Gaze Into The Stars, They Look Down Upon Me With Pity From Their Serene And Silent Spaces, Like Eyes Glistening With Tears Over The Little Lot Of Man. Thousands Of Generations, All As Noisy As Our Own, Have Been Swallowed Up By Time, And There Remains No Record Of Them Any More. Yet Arcturus And Orion, Sirius And Pleiades, Are Still Shining In Their Courses, Clear And Young, As When The Shepherd First Noted Them In The Plain Of Shinar!

All Human Things Do Require To Have An Ideal In Them; To Have Some Soul In Them.

Success In Life, In Anything, Depends Upon The Number Of Persons That One Can Make Himself Agreeable To.

Success In Life

Men's Hearts Ought Not To Be Set Against One Another, But Set With One Another And All Against Evil Only.

The First Duty Of Man Is That Of Subduing Fear.

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

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.

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

He That Has Done Nothing Has Known Nothing.

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

Nature, After All, Is Still The Grand Agent In Making Poets.

Are We Not Spirits, That Are Shaped Into A Body, Into An Appearance; And That Fade Away Again Into Air And Invisibility? Oh, Heaven, It Is Mysterious, It Is Awful To Consider That We Not Only Carry A Future Ghost Within Us; But Are, In Very Deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, Whence Had We Them; This Stormy Force; This Life-blood With Its Burning Passion? They Are Dust And Shadow; A Shadow-system Gathered Round Our Me; Wherein, Through Some Moments Or Years, The Divine Essence Is To Be Revealed In The Flesh.

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

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

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.

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.

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!

O Thou That Pinest In The Imprisonment Of The Actual, And Criest Bitterly To The Gods For A Kingdom Wherein To Rule And Create, Know This For A Truth: The Thing Thou Seekest Is Already Here, "here Or Nowhere," Couldst Thou Only See.

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

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

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

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.

A Fourth Estate, Of Able Editors, Springs Up.

Dishonesty Is The Raw Material Not Of Quacks Only, But Also In Great Part Dupes.

Close Thy Byron ; Open Thy Goethe .

Imperfection Clings To A Person, And If They Wait Till They Are Brushed Off Entirely, They Would Spin For Ever On Their Axis, Advancing Nowhere.

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.

It Is Well Said, In Every Sense, That A Man's Religion Is The Chief Fact With Regard To Him.

Wealth Has More And More Increased, And At The Same Time Gathered Itself More And More Into Masses, Strangely Altering The Old Relations, And Increasing The Distance Between The Rich And The Poor.

The Christian Must Be Consumed By The Conviction Of The Infinite Beauty Of Holiness And The Infinite Damnability Of Sin.

Infinite Beauty

The All Of Things Is An Infinite Conjugation Of The Verb To Do .

Love Not Pleasure; Love God. This Is The Everlasting Yea, Wherein All Contradiction Is Solved.

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.

The Greatest Fault Is To Be Conscious Of None.

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.

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.

A Fair Day's Wages For A Fair Day's Work.

If I Had My Way, The World Would Hear A Pretty Stern Command - Exit Christ.

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.

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.

No Violent Extreme Endures.

Pain Was Not Given Thee Merely To Be Miserable Under; Learn From It, Turn It To Account.

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!

Blessed Is He Who Has Found His Work; Let Him Ask No Other Blessedness. He Has A Work, A Life-purpose; He Has Found It, And Will Follow It! How, As A Free-flowing Channel, Dug And Torn By Noble Force Through The Sour Mudswamp Of One's Existence, Like An Ever-deepening River There, It Runs And Flows

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

Professors Of The Dismal Science, I Perceive The Length Of Your Tether Is Now Pretty Well Run; And I Must Request You To Talk A Little Lower In The Future.

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.

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

Show Me The Man You Honor; I Know By That Symptom, Better Than By Any Other, What Kind Of Man You Yourself Are. For You Show Me There What Your Ideal Of Manhood Is; What Kind Of Man You Long Inexpressibly To Be.

Doubt, Of Whatever Kind, Can Be Ended By Action Alone.

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

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

We Remove Mountains, And Make Seas Our Smooth Highway; Nothing Can Resist Us. We War With Rude Nature; And, By Our Resistless Engines, Come Off Always Victorious, And Loaded With Spoils.

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.

It Is Part Of My Creed That The Only Poetry Is History, Could We Tell It Right.

Old Age Is Not A Matter For Sorrow. It Is Matter For Thanks If We Have Left Our Work Done Behind Us.

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

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

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

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.

Genuine Work Alone, What Thou Workest Faithfully, That Is Eternal, As The Almighty Founder And World-builder Himself.

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.

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?

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!

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

Habit Is The Deepest Law Of Human Nature

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

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.

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.

The Steam-engine I Call Fire-demon And Great; But It Is Nothing To The Invention Of Fire.

The Mathematics Of High Achievement

Thought, True Labor Of Any Kind, Highest Virtue Itself, Is It Not The Daughter Of Pain?

It Is No Very Good Symptom, Either Of Nations Or Individuals, That They Deal Much In Vaticination. Happy Men Are Full Of The Present, For Its Bounty Suffices Them; And Wise Men Also, For Its Duties Engage Them. Our Grand Business Undoubtedly Is Not To See What Lies Dimly At A Distance, But To Do What Clearly Lies At Hand.

The Deadliest Sin Were The Consciousness Of No Sin

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.

As There Is No Danger Of Our Becoming, Any Of Us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I Mean To Say All The Good Of Him I Justly Can.

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.

I Came Hither [craigenputtoch] Solely With The Design To Simplify My Way Of Life And To Secure The Independence Through Which I Could Be Enabled To Remain True To Myself.

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

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

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.

Acorns Are Planted Silently By Some Unnoticed Breeze.

The Difference Between Socrates And Jesus? The Great Conscious And The Immeasurably Great Unconscious.

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

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.

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.

Man Always Worships Something; Always He Sees The Infinite Shadowed Forth In Something Finite; And Indeed Can And Must So See It In Any Finite Thing, Once Tempt Him Well To Fix His Eyes Thereon.

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

Evil And Good Are Everywhere, Like Shadow And Substance; Inseparable (for Men) Yet Not Hostile, Only Opposed.

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

At The Bottom There Is No Perfect History; There Is None Such Conceivable. All Past Centuries Have Rotted Down, And Gone Confusedly Dumb And Quiet.

Every Noble Crown Is, And On Earth Will Forever Be, A Crown Of Thorns.

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