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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!

-Thomas Carlyle

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The Great Man's Sincerity

Thomas Carlyle

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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!

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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.

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The Secret Of Business Is To Know Something That Nobody Else Knows. The Greatest Of Faults, I Should Say Is To Be Conscious Of None.

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

If You Are Ever In Doubt As To Whether To Kiss A Pretty Girl, Always Give Her The Benefit Of The Doubt.

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.

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Terror Itself, When Once Grown Transcendental, Becomes A Kind Of Courage; As Frost Sufficiently Intense, According To The Poet Milton, Will Burn.

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

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

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Pin Thy Faith To No Man's Sleeve. Hast Thou Not Two Eyes Of Thy Own?

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.

History Is The New Poetry.

Biography Is The Only True History.

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

No Sadder Proof Can Be Given By A Man Of His Own Littleness Than Disbelief In Great Men.

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

There Are Remedies For All Things But Death.

Literature Is The Thought Of Thinking Souls.

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!

Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Thought Will Not Work Except In Silence.

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.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

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

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Isolation Is The Sum Total Of Wretchedness To A Man.

Be Not A Slave Of Words.

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The Fearful Unbelief Is Unbelief In Yourself.

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

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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.

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

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

Self-contemplation Is Infallibly The Symptom Of Disease.

Man Is Emphatically A Proselytizing Creature.

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The True Church Of England, At This Moment, Lies In The Editors Of The Newspapers.

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For Suffering And Enduring There Is No Remedy, But Striving And Doing.

Pain And Suffering

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

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

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?

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

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.

Is Not Light Grander Than Fire?

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

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

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.

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

See Deep Enough, And You See Musically.

Music And Healing

Money Will Buy Money's Worth; But The Thing Men Call Fame, What Is It?

The Block Of Granite Which Was An Obstacle In The Pathway Of The Weak, Became A Stepping-stone In The Pathway Of The Strong.

Thou Fool! Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom; That Idle Crag Thou Sittest On Is Six Thousand Years Of Age.

The Great Soul Of This World Is Just.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Laughter Means Sympathy.

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

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

Speech Is Too Often Not The Art Of Concealing Thought, But Of Quite Stifling And Suspending Thought, So That There Is None To Conceal.

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

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All Great Peoples Are Conservative.

The Battle That Never Ends Is The Battle Of Belief Against Disbelief

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How Great A Possibility, How Small A Realized Result.

The Purpose Of Man Is In Action Not Thought.

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A Battle Is A Terrible Conjugation Of The Verb To Kill: I Kill, Thou Killest, He Kills, We Kill, They Kill, All Kill.

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

The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.

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

Pin Your Faith To No Ones Sleeves, Haven't You Two Eyes Of Your Own.

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

The Deadliest Sin Were The Consciousness Of No Sin

I Think Scandinavian Paganism, To Us Here, Is More Interesting Than Any Other. It Is, For One Thing, The Latest; It Continued In These Regions Of Europe Till The Eleventh Century; 800 Years Ago The Norwegians Were Still Worshipers Of Odin. It Is Interesting Also As The Creed Of Our Fathers; The Men Whose Blood Still Runs In Our Veins, Whom Doubtless We Still Resemble In So Many Ways.

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

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

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

Rightly Viewed No Meanest Object Is Insignificant; All Objects Are As Windows Through Which The Philosophic Eye Looks Into Infinitude Itself.

France Was Long A Despotism Tempered By Epigrams.

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.

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 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.

A Thought Once Awakened Does Not Again Slumber.

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

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

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

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

Parties On The Back Of Parties, At War With The World And With Each Other.

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.

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

What The Light Of Your Mind, Which Is The Direct Inspiration Of The Almighty, Pronounces Incredible, That, In God's Name, Leave Uncredited. At Your Peril Do Not Try Believing That!

The Mathematics Of High Achievement

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

The First Duty Of Man Is That Of Subduing Fear.

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

Does Not Every True Man Feel That He Is Himself Made Higher By Doing Reverence To What Is Really Above Him?

Silence Is More Eloquent Than Words.

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.

Every Man Has A Coward And Hero In His Soul.

All History . . . Is An Inarticulate Bible.

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

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

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