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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.

-Thomas Carlyle

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It Is No Very

Thomas Carlyle

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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.

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A Man Cannot Make A Pair Of Shoes Rightly Unless He Do It In A Devout Manner.

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.

Worship Is Transcendent Wonder.

No Country Can Find Eternal Peace And Comfort Where The Vote Of Judas Iscariot Is As Good As The Vote Of The Saviour Of Mankind.

Man Makes Circumstances, And Spiritually As Well As Economically, Is The Artificer Of His Own Fortune.

Armed Soldier, Terrible As Death, Relentless As Doom; Doing God's Judgement On The Enemies Of God. It Is A Phenomenon Not Of Joyful Nature; No, But Of Awful, To Be Looked At With Pious Terror And Awe.

All Greatness Is Unconscious, Or It Is Little And Naught.

Woe To Him, . . . Who Has No Court Of Appeal Against The World's Judgment.

A Man Willing To Work, And Unable To Find Work, Is Perhaps The Saddest Sight That Fortune's Inequality Exhibits Under This Sun.

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.

Misery Which, Through Long Ages, Had No Spokesman, No Helper, Will Now Be Its Own Helper And Speak For Itself.

The Suffering Man Ought Really To Consume His Own Smoke; There Is No Good In Emitting Smoke Till You Have Made It Into Fire.

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.

Cash-payment Never Was, Or Could Except For A Few Years Be, The Union-bond Of Man To Man. Cash Never Yet Paid One Man Fully His Deserts To Another; Nor Could It, Nor Can It, Now Or Henceforth To The End Of The World.

Taste, If It Mean Anything But A Paltry Connoisseurship, Must Mean A General Susceptibility To Truth And Nobleness, A Sense To Discern, And A Heart To Love And Reverence All Beauty, Order, Goodness, Wheresoever, Or In Whatsoever Forms And Accompaniments They Are To Be Seen. This Surely Implies, As Its Chief Condition, Not Any Given External Rank Or Situation, But A Finely-gifted Mind, Purified Into Harmony With Itself, Into Keenness And Justness Of Vision; Above All, Kindled Into Love And Generous Admiration.

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

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.

Venerable To Me Is The Hard Hand,--crooked, Coarse,--wherein, Notwithstanding, Lies A Cunning Virtue, Indispensably Royal As Of The Sceptre Of The Planet.

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.

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

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!

Every New Opinion, At Its Starting, Is Precisely In A Minority Of One.

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.

The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.

Of All The Things Which Man Can Do Or Make Here Below, By Far The Most Momentous, Wonderful, And Worthy Are The Things We Call Books.

We Call That Fire Of The Black Thunder-cloud "electricity," And Lecture Learnedly About It, And Grind The Like Of It Out Of Glass And Silk: But What Is It? What Made It? Whence Comes It? Whither Goes It?

Not What I Have, But What I Do Is My Kingdom.

To A Shower Of Gold Most Things Are Penetrable.

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.

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.

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?

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.

No Age Seemed The Age Of Romance To Itself.

A Noble Book! All Men's Book!

History Is The Essence Of Innumerable Biographies.

No Great Man Lives In Vain. The History Of The World Is But The Biography Of Great Men.

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

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

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

Nothing Is More Terrible Than Activity Without Insight.

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

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!

Oh, Give Us The Man Who Sings At His Work.

History Is A Great Dust Heap.

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.

Teaching School Is But Another Word For Sure And Not Very Slow Destruction.

There Is But One Thing Without Honor, Smitten With Eternal Barrenness, Inability To Do Or To Be,-insincerity, Unbelief.

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.

I Had A Lifelong Quarrel With God, But In The End We Made Up.

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

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

To Reform A World, To Reform A Nation, No Wise Man Will Undertake; And All But Foolish Men Know, That The Only Solid, Though A Far Slower Reformation, Is What Each Begins And Perfects On Himself.

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

A Man Lives By Believing Something.

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.

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.

The Graceful Minuet-dance Of Fancy Must Give Place To The Toilsome, Thorny Pilgrimage Of Understanding. On The Transition From The Age Of Romance To That Of Science.

I Too Acknowledge The All-out Omnipotence Of Early Culture And Nature; Hereby We Have Either A Doddered Dwarf-bush, Or A High-towering, Wide-shadowing Tree! Either A Sick Yellow Cabbage, Or An Edible Luxuriant Green One. Of A Truth, It Is The Duty Of All Men, Especially Of All Philosophers, To Note Down With Accuracy The Characteristic Circumstances Of Their Education,--what Furthered, What Hindered, What In Any Way Modified It.

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

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

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 Man--be The Heavens Ever Praised!--is Sufficient For Himself.

One Seems To Believe Almost All That They Believe; And When They Stop Short And Call It A Religion, And You Pass On, And Call It Only A Reminiscence Of One, Should You Not Part With The Kiss Of Peace?

The Vulgarity Of Inanimate Things Requires Time To Get Accustomed To; But Living, Breathing, Bustling, Plotting, Planning, Human Vulgarity Is A Species Of Moral Ipecacuanha, Enough To Destroy Any Comfort.

Reform Is Not Pleasant, But Grievous; No Person Can Reform Themselves Without Suffering And Hard Work, How Much Less A Nation.

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.

They Only Are Wise Who Know That They Know Nothing.

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

Prayer Is And Remains Always A Native And Deepest Impulse Of The Soul Of Man.

So Here Hath Been Dawning Another Blue Day; Think, Wilt Thou Let It Slip Useless Away? Out Of Eternity This New Day Is Born, Into Eternity At Night Will Return.

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.

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.

Good Breeding Differs, If At All, From High Breeding Only As It Gracefully Remembers The Rights Of Others, Rather Than Gracefully Insists On Its Own Rights.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is The Feeling Of Injustice That Is Insupportable To All Men.

We Are Not Altogether Here To Tolerate. We Are Here To Resist, To Control And Vanquish Withal.

Alas! We Know That Ideals Can Never Be Completely Embodied In Practice. Ideals Must Ever Lie A Great Way Off--and We Will Thankfully Content Ourselves With Any Not Intolerable Approximation Thereto! Let No Man, As Schiller Says, Too Querulously "measure By A Scale Of Perfection The Meager Product Of Reality" In This Poor World Of Ours.

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.

A Star Is Beautiful; It Affords Pleasure, Not From What It Is To Do, Or To Give, But Simply By Being What It Is. It Befits The Heavens; It Has Congruity With The Mighty Space In Which It Dwells. It Has Repose; No Force Disturbs Its Eternal Peace. It Has Freedom; No Obstruction Lies Between It And Infinity.

The Present Is The Living Sum-total Of The Whole Past.

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

Delirium Tremens

The Wise Man Is But A Clever Infant, Spelling Letters From A Hieroglyphical Prophetic Book, The Lexicon Of Which Lies In Eternity.

The Times Are Very Bad. Very Well, You Are There To Make Them Better.

The Mathematics Of High Achievement

The Crash Of The Whole Solar And Stellar Systems Could Only Kill You Once.

True Friends, Like Ivy And The Wall Both Stand Together, And Together Fall.

Silence Is More Eloquent Than Words.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The First Duty Of Man Is That Of Subduing Fear.

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

The Fearful Unbelief Is Unbelief In Yourself.

For, Strictly Considered, What Is All Knowledge Too But Recorded Experience, And A Product Of History; Of Which, Therefore, Reasoning And Belief, No Less Than Action And Passion, Are Essential Materials?

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Experience Takes Dreadfully High School-wages, But He Teaches Like No Other.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Government Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented A Taxing Machine, To The Contented A Machine For Securing Property.

The Eternal Stars Shine Out Again, So Soon As It Is Dark Enough.

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

No Violent Extreme Endures.

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.

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.

Laughter Means Sympathy.

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.

The Universe Is But One Vast Symbol Of God.

Acorns Are Planted Silently By Some Unnoticed Breeze.

The Genuine Essence Of Truth Never Dies.

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

Society Is Founded Upon Cloth.

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.

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

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

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 Eye Sees What It Brings The Power To See.

The Public Is Anold Woman.let Her Maunderand Mumble.

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

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

In Idleness There Is A Perpetual Despair.

A Loving Heart Is The Beginning Of All Knowledge.

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.

The Thing Is Not Only To Avoid Error, But To Attain Immense Masses Of Truth.

The Past Is Always Attractive Because It Is Drained Of Fear.

Every Noble Work Is At First Impossible.

Inspirational Life

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

I Should Say Sincerity, A Deep, Great, Genuine Sincerity, Is The First Characteristic Of All Men In Any Way Heroic.

Shakespeare Says, We Are Creatures That Look Before And After; The More Surprising That We Do Not Look Around A Little, And See What Is Passing Under Our Very Eyes.

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.

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

A Strong Mind Always Hopes, And Has Always Cause To Hope.

That There Should One Man Die Ignorant Who Had Capacity For Knowledge, This I Call A Tragedy.

One Is Weary Of Hearing About The Omnipotence Of Money. I Will Say Rather That, For A Genuine Man, It Is Not Evil To Be Poor.

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

Heroes, It Would Seem, Exist Always And A Certain Worship Of Them.

A Heavenly Awe Overshadowed And Encompassed, As It Still Ought, And Must, All Earthly Business Whatsoever.

If There Be Not A Religious Element In The Relations Of Men, Such Relations Are Miserable And Doomed To Ruin.

Burke Said There Were Three Estates In Parliament; But, In The Reporter's Gallery Yonder, There Sat A Fourth Estate More Important Far Than They All.

Imagination Is A Poor Matter When It Has To Part Company With Understanding.

It Is In General More Profitable To Reckon Up Our Defeats Than To Boast Of Our Attainments.

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.

Happy Season Of Virtuous Youth, When Shame Is Still An Impassable Barrier, And The Sacred Air-cities Of Hope Have Not Shrunk Into The Mean Clay Hamlets Of Reality; And Man, By His Nature, Is Yet Infinite And Free.

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

No Amount Of Ability Is Of The Slightest Avail Without Honor.

A Sad Spectacle. If They Be Inhabited, What A Scope For Misery And Folly. If They Be Not Inhabited, What A Waste Of Space.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

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.

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.

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

A Laugh, To Be Joyous, Must Flow From A Joyous Heart, For Without Kindness, There Can Be No True Joy.

Leaders: Captains Of Industry.

He Who Has Health, Has Hope; And He Who Has Hope, Has Everything.

Biography Is The Only True History.

With Stupidity And Sound Digestion, Man May Front Much.

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

Even In The Meanest Sorts Of Labor, The Whole Soul Of A Man Is Composed Into A Kind Of Real Harmony The Instant He Sets Himself To Work.

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

We Have Profoundly Forgotten Everywhere That Cash-payment Is Not The Sole Relation Of Human Beings.

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.

Affectation Is The Product Of Falsehood.

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.

Is Not Light Grander Than Fire? It Is The Same Element In A State Of Purity.

Who Is There That, In Logical Words, Can Express The Effect Music Has On Us?

All True Work Is Sacred.

A Good Book Is The Purest Essence Of A Human Soul.

My Books Are Friends That Never Fail Me.

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

I've Got A Great Ambition To Die Of Exhaustion Rather Than Boredom.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Such Is The World. Understand It, Despise It, Love It; Cheerfully Hold On Thy Way Through It, With Thy Eye On Highest Loadstars!

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.

Every Human Being Has A Right To Hear What Other Wise Human Beings Have Spoken To Him. It Is One Of The Rights Of Men; A Very Cruel Injustice If You Deny It To A Man!

All Great Peoples Are Conservative.

And Yet Without Labour There Were No Ease, No Rest, So Much As Conceivable.

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.

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.

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

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.

Generations Are As The Days Of Toilsome Mankind; Death And Birth Are The Vesper And The Matin Bells That Summon Mankind To Sleep And To Rise Refreshed For New Advancement. What The Father Has Made, The Son Can Make And Enjoy; But Has Also Work Of His Own Appointed Him. Thus All Things Wax And Roll Onwards: Arts, Establishments, Opinions, Nothing Is Ever Completed, But Ever Completing.

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