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Skepticism, As I Said, Is Not Intellectual Only; It Is Moral Also; A Chronic Atrophy And Disease Of The Whole Soul. A Man Lives By Believing Something; Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things. A Sad Case For Him When All That He Can Manage To Believe Is Something He Can Button In His Pocket, And With One Or The Other Organ Eat And Digest! Lower Than That He Will Not Get.

-Thomas Carlyle

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Skepticism, As I Said,

Thomas Carlyle

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Skepticism, As I Said, Is Not Intellectual Only; It Is Moral Also; A Chronic Atrophy And Disease Of The Whole Soul. A Man Lives By Believing Something; Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things. A Sad Case For Him When All That He Can Manage To Believe Is Something He Can Button In His Pocket, And With One Or The Other Organ Eat And Digest! Lower Than That He Will Not Get.

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

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

The Highest Being Reveals Himself In Man.

A Man Lives By Believing Something: Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things.

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.

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

The Purpose Of Man Is In Action Not Thought.

Our Works Are The Mirror Wherein The Spirit First Sees Its Natural Lineaments. Hence, Too, The Folly Of That Impossible Precept, Know Theyself; Till It Be Translated Into This Partially Possible One, Know What Thou Canst Work At.

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

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

No Nobler Feeling Than This, Of Admiration For One Higher Than Himself, Dwells In The Breast Of Man. It Is To This Hour, And At All Hours, The Vivifying Influence In Man's Life.

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Fame, We May Understand, Is No Sure Test Of Merit, But Only A Probability Of Such; It Is An Accident, Not A Property Of Man.

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 True Past Departs Not, No Truth Or Goodness Realized By Man Ever Dies, Or Can Die; But All Is Still Here, And, Recognized Or Not, Lives And Works Through Endless Change.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Democracy Is, By The Nature Of It, A Self-canceling Business: And Gives In The Long Run A Net Result Of Zero.

Lies Exist Only To Be Extinguished.

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

He Is Wise Who Can Instruct Us And Assist Us In The Business Of Virtuous Living.

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

Nothing Is More Terrible Than Activity Without Insight.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Blessed Be The God's Voice; For It Is True, And Falsehoods Have To Cease Before It!

Democracy Will Prevail When Men Believe The Vote Of Judas As Good As That Of Jesus Christ.

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

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.

Piety Does Not Mean That A Man Should Make A Sour Face About Things, And Refuse To Enjoy In Moderation What His Maker Has Given.

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

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

Culture Is The Process By Which A Person Becomes All That They Were Created Capable Of Being.

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.

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.

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

What Unknown Seas Of Feeling Lie In Man, And Will From Time To Time Break Through!

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.

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

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Man Is Emphatically A Proselytizing Creature.

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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.

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Bricks And Mortar

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No Man Lives Without Jostling And Being Jostled; In All Ways He Has To Elbow Himself Through The World, Giving And Receiving Offence.

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All Reform Except A Moral One Will Prove Unavailing.

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No Ghost Was Every Seen By Two Pair Of Eyes.

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Debt Is A Bottomless Sea.

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The Fearful Unbelief Is Unbelief In Yourself.

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The King Is The Man Who Can.

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

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Before Philosophy Can Teach By Experience, The Philosophy Has To Be In Readiness, The Experience Must Be Gathered And Intelligibly Recorded.

Custom Doth Make Dotards Of Us All.

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!

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 Loving Heart Is The Beginning Of All Knowledge.

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

Nature Admits No Lie.

There Are Good And Bad Times, But Our Mood Changes More Often Than Our Fortune.

The First Duty Of Man Is That Of Subduing Fear.

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All Human Souls, Never So Bedarkened, Love Light; Light Once Kindled Spreads Till All Is Luminous.

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They Only Are Wise Who Know That They Know Nothing.

I Call That [book Of Job], Apart From All Theories About It, One Of The Grandest Things Ever Written With Pen.

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

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.

I Don't Like To Talk Much With People Who Always Agree With Me. It Is Amusing To Coquette With An Echo For A Little While, But One Soon Tires Of It.

There Is Something In Man Which Your Science Cannot Satisfy.

My Whinstone House My Castle Is, I Have My Own Four Walls.

Today Is Not Yesterday: We Ourselves Change; How Can Our Works And Thoughts, If They Are Always To Be The Fittest, Continue Always The Same? Change, Indeed Is Painful; Yet Ever Needful; And If Memory Have Its Force And Worth, So Also Has Hope.

Man Is A Tool-using Animal.

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

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Let One Who Wants To Move And Convince Others, First Be Convinced And Moved Themselves. If A Person Speaks With Genuine Earnestness The Thoughts, The Emotion And The Actual Condition Of Their Own Heart, Others Will Listen Because We All Are Knit Together By The Tie Of Sympathy.

Reform, Like Charity, Must Begin At Home.

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.

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All Great Peoples Are Conservative.

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

The World Is A Republic Of Mediocrities, And Always Was.

Poetry, Therefore, We Will Call Musical Thought.

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.

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

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.

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

To The Wisest Man, Wide As Is His Vision. Nature Remains Of Quite Infinite Depth, Of Quite Infinite Expansion And All Experience Thereof Limits Itself To Some Few Computed Centuries And Measured Square Miles.

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

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.

History Is The Essence Of Innumerable Biographies.

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

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

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

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."

There Is Endless Merit In A Man's Knowing When To Have Done.

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

A Man's Perfection Is His Work.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

Universal History, The History Of What Man Has Accomplished In This World, Is At Bottom The History Of The Great Men Who Have Worked Here.

Man's Earthly Interests,'are All Hooked And Buttoned Together, And Held Up, By Clothes.

Histories Are A Kind Of Distilled Newspapers.

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

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

We Have Not The Love Of Greatness, But The Love Of The Love Of Greatness.

Violence Does Even Justice Unjustly.

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.

History Is The New Poetry.

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.

Whoso Has Sixpence Is Sovereign (to The Length Of Sixpence) Over All Men; Commands Cooks To Feed Him, Philosophers To Teach Him, Kings To Mount Guard Over Him,to The Length Of Sixpence.

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.

My Books Are Friends That Never Fail Me.

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.

The Deepest Depth Of Vulgarism Is That Of Setting Up Money As The Ark Of The Covenant.

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

Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden.

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.

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.

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.

Leaders: Captains Of Industry.

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.

What This Country Needs Is A Man Who Knows God Other Than By Heresay.

How Were Friendship Possible? In Mutual Devotedness To The Good And True; Otherwise Impossible, Except As Armed Neutrality Or Hollow Commercial League. A Man, Be The Heavens Ever Praised, Is Sufficient For Himself; Yet Were Ten Men, United In Love, Capable Of Being And Of Doing What Ten Thousand Singly Would Fail In. Infinite Is The Help Man Can Yield To Man.

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.

Literature Is The Thought Of Thinking Souls.

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

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

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?

Isolation Is The Sum Total Of Wretchedness To A Man.

The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.

If Time Is Precious, No Book That Will Not Improve By Repeated Readings Deserves To Be Read At All.

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

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.

The Situation That Has Not Its Duty, Its Ideal, Was Never Yet Occupied By Man. Yes, Here, In This Poor, Miserable, Hampered, Despicable Actual, Wherein Thou Even Now Standest, Here Or Nowhere Is Thy Ideal; Work It Out Therefrom, And, Working, Believe, Live, Be Free. Fool! The Ideal Is In Thyself.

If There Be No Enemy There's No Fight. If No Fight, No Victory And If No Victory There Is No Crown.

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

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

Affectation Is The Product Of Falsehood.

I Have No Patience Whatever With These Gorilla Damnifications Of Humanity.

There Is A Great Discovery Still To Be Made In Literature, That Of Paying Literary Men By The Quantity They Do Not Write.

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 Greatest Mistake Is To Imagine That We Never Err.

The Greatest Fault Is To Be Conscious Of None.

The Mystical Bond Of Brotherhood Makes All Men Brothers.

A Man Protesting Against Error Is On The Way Towards Uniting Himself With All Men That Believe In Truth.

Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.

See Deep Enough, And You See Musically.

Music And Healing

In A Symbol There Is Concealment And Yet Revelation: Here Therefore, By Silence And By Speech Acting Together, Comes A Double Significance.

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

Laughter Is The Cipher Key Wherewith We Decipher The Whole Man

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

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!

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

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.

Caution Is The Lower Story Of Prudence.

Men Are Grown Mechanical In Head And In The Heart, As Well As In The Hand. They Have Lost Faith In Individual Endeavour, And In Natural Force Of Any Kind.

Happy The People Whose Annals Are Blank In History Books!

Tell A Person They Are Brave And You Help Them Become So.

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.

A Noble Book! All Men's Book!

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

No Man Is Born Without Ambitious Worldly Desires.

Laws, Written, If Not On Stone Tables, Yet On The Azure Of Infinitude, In The Inner Heart Of God's Creation, Certain As Life, Certain As Death, Are There, And Thou Shalt Not Disobey Them.

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

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