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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.

-Thomas Carlyle

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The Stifled Hum Of

Thomas Carlyle

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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.

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

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

Enjoying Things Which Are Pleasant; That Is Not The Evil; It Is The Reducing Of Our Moral Self To Slavery By Them That Is.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Thirty Millions, Mostly Fools.

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

All Work Of Man Is As The Swimmer's: A Vast Ocean Threatens To Devour Him; If He Front It Not Bravely, It Will Keep Its Word.

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!

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

All Men, If They Work Not As In The Great Taskmaster's Eye, Will Work Wrong, And Work Unhappily For Themselves And For You.

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

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

For All Right Judgment Of Any Man Or Things It Is Useful, Nay, Essential, To See His Good Qualities Before Pronouncing On His Bad.

So Much Of Truth, Only Under An Ancient Obsolete Vesture, But The Spirit Of It Still True, Do I Find In The Paganism Of Old Nations. Nature Is Still Divine, The Revelation Of The Workings Of God; The Hero Is Still Worshipable: This, Under Poor Cramped Incipient Forms, Is What All Pagan Religions Have Struggled, As They Could, To Set Forth.

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.

Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.

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

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

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

Leaders: Captains Of Industry.

How Great A Possibility, How Small A Realized Result.

He Who Takes Not Counsel Of The Unseen And Silent, From Him Will Never Come Real Visibility And Speech.

Every Man Has A Coward And Hero In His Soul.

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

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

Genius Is An Infinite Capacity For Taking Pains.

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

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

A Pygmy Standing On The Outward Crust Of This Small Planet, His Far-reaching Spirit Stretches Outward To The Infinite, And There Alone Finds Rest.

What Is Philosophy But A Continual Battle Against Custom?

He That Can Work Is Born To Be King Of Something.

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

A Man Without A Goal Is Like A Ship Without A Rudder.

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

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.

And There Are Ben [jonson] And William Shakespeare In Wit-combat, Sure Enough; Ben Bearing Down Like A Mighty Spanish War-ship, Fraught With All Learning And Artillery; Shakespeare Whisking Away From Him - Whisking Right Through Him, Athwart The Big Bulk And Timbers Of Him; Like A Miraculous Celestial Light-ship, Woven All Of Sheet-lightning And Sunbeams!

Histories Are A Kind Of Distilled Newspapers.

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

No Good Book Or Good Thing Of Any Kind Shows It Best Face At First. No The Most Common Quality Of In A True Work Of Art That Has Excellence And Depth, Is That At First Sight It Produces A Certain Disappointment.

All Sorts Of Heroes Are Intrinsically Of The Same Material; That Given A Great Soul, Open To The Divine Significance Of Life, Then There Is Given A Man Fit To Speak Of This, To Sing Of This, To Fight And Work For This, In A Great, Victorious, Enduring Manner; There Is Given A Hero, -- The Outward Shape Of Whom Will Depend On The Time And The Environment He Finds Himself In.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In Idleness There Is A Perpetual Despair.

The Most Unhappy Of All Men Is The Man Who Cannot Tell What He Is Going To Do, Who Has Got No Work Cut-out For Him In The World, And Does Not Go Into It. For Work Is The Grand Cure Of All The Maladies And Miseries That Ever Beset Mankind,honest Work, Which You Intend Getting Done.

Speech Is Of Time, Silence Is Of Eternity.

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.

Laissez-faire, Supply And Demand-one Begins To Be Weary Of All That. Leave All To Egotism, To Ravenous Greed Of Money, Of Pleasure, Of Applause-it Is The Gospel Of Despair.

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

Are Not Our Greatest Men As Good As Lost? The Men That Walk Daily Among Us, Warming Us, Feeding Us, Walk Shrouded In Darkness, Mere Mythic Men.

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

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

With Stupidity And Sound Digestion, Man May Front Much.

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

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

The Highest Ensign That Men Ever Met And Embraced Under, The Cross Itself, Had No Meaning Save An Accidental Extrinsic One.

History Is The Essence Of Innumerable Biographies.

The Modern Majesty Consists In Work. What A Man Can Do Is His Greatest Ornament, And He Always Consults His Dignity By Doing It.

Biography Is The Only True History.

'genius' Which Means Transcendent Capacity Of Taking Trouble, First Of All.

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.

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

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

But The Whim We Have Of Happiness Is Somewhat Thus. By Certain Valuations, And Averages, Of Our Own Striking, We Come Upon Some Sort Of Average Terrestrial Lot; This We Fancy Belongs To Us By Nature, And Of Indefeasible Rights. It Is Simple Payment Of Our Wages, Of Our Deserts; Requires Neither Thanks Nor Complaint. Foolish Soul! What Act Of Legislature Was There That Thou Shouldst Be Happy? A Little While Ago Thou Hadst No Right To Be At All.

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

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.

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

Persons, With Big Wigs Many Of Them And Austere Aspect, Whom I Take To Be Professors Of The Dismal Science… Coining “dismal Science” As A Nickname For Political Economy

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

The Past Is All Holy To Us; The Dead Are All Holy; Even They That Were Wicked When Alive.

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.

Happy The People Whose Annals Are Blank In History Books!

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

Have Not I Myself Known Five Hundred Living Soldiers Sabred Into Crows' Meat For A Piece Of Glazed Cotton, Which They Call Their Flag; Which Had You Sold It At Any Market-cross, Would Not Have Brought Above Three Groschen?

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.

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

Poverty, We May Say, Surrounds A Man With Ready-made Barriers, Which If They Do Mournfully Gall And Hamper, Do At Least Prescribe For Him, And Force On Him, A Sort Of Course And Goal; A Safe And Beaten, Though A Circuitous, Course. A Great Part Of His Guidance Is Secure Against Fatal Error, Is Withdrawn From His Control. The Rich, Again, Has His Whole Life To Guide, Without Goal Or Barrier, Save Of His Own Choosing, And, Tempted, Is Too Likely To Guide It Ill.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Affectation Is The Product Of Falsehood.

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.

Reality, If Rightly Interpreted, Is Grander Than Fiction.

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

A Loving Heart Is The Beginning Of All Knowledge.

Look Around You. Your World-hosts Are All In Mutiny, In Confusion, Destitution; On The Eve Of Fiery Wreck And Madness! They Will Not March Farther For You, On The Sixpence A Day And Supply-demand Principle; They Will Not; Nor Ought They, Nor Can They. Ye Shall Reduce Them To Order, Begin Reducing Them. To Order, To Just Subordination; Noble Loyalty In Return For Noble Guidance. Their Souls Are Driven Nigh Mad; Let Yours Be Sane And Ever Saner.

The Latest Gospel In This World Is, Know Thy Work And Do It.

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.

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?

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

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

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

The Glory Of A Workman, Still More Of A Master Workman, That He Does His Work Well, Ought To Be His Most Precious Possession; Like The Honor Of A Soldier, Dearer To Him Than Life.

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

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

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.

Speech Is Great, But Silence Is Greater.

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

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

Every Noble Work Is At First Impossible.

Inspirational Life

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.

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

Does It Ever Give Thee Pause That Men Used To Have A Soul? Not By Hearsay Alone, Or As A Figure Of Speech, But As A Thruth That They Knew And Acted Upon. Verily It Was Another World Then, But Yet It Is A Pity We Have Lost The Tidings Of Our Souls. We Shall Have To Go In Search Of Them Again Or Worse In All Ways Shall Befall Us.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Poetry, Therefore, We Will Call Musical Thought.

The Word Of Mohammad Is A Voice Direct From Nature's Own Heart - All Else Is Wind In Comparison.

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

Neither Let Mistakes And Wrong Directions - Of Which Every Man, In His Studies And Elsewhere, Falls Into Many - Discourage You. There Is Precious Instruction To Be Got By Finding That We Are Wrong. Let A Man Try Faithfully, Manfully To Be Right, He Will Grow Daily More And More Right. It Is, At Bottom, The Condition Which All Men Have To Cultivate Themselves. 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.

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

If Hero Means Sincere Man, Why May Not Every One Of Us Be A Hero?

Skepticism . . . Is Not Intellectual Only It Is Moral Also, A Chronic Atrophy And Disease Of The Whole Soul.

Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden.

Friendship, In The Old Heroic Sense Of That Term, No Longer Exists. It Is In Reality No Longer Expected Or Recognized As A Virtue Among Men.

Lost Friendship

Men Are To Be Guided Only By Their Self-interests. Good Government Is A Good Balancing Of These; And, Except A Keen Eye And Appetite For Self-interest, Requires No Virtue In Any Quarter. To Both Parties It Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented, A Taxing-machine; To The Contented, A Machine For Securing Property. Its Duties And Its Faults Are Not Those Of A Father, But Of An Active Parish-constable.

History Is The New Poetry.

Teach A Parrot The Terms 'supply And Demand' And You've Got An Economist.

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

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.

Nakedness, Hunger, Distress Of All Kinds, Death Itself Have Been Cheerfully Suffered, When The Heart Was Right. It Is The Feeling Of Injustice That Is Insupportable To All Men.

Rest Is For The Dead.

Society Is Founded On Hero-worship.

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

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

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.

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

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

The End Of Man Is Action.

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

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

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

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.

The Hell Of These Days Is The Fear Of Not Getting Along, Especially Of Not Making Money.

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.

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

Of A Truth, Men Are Mystically United: A Mystic Bond Of Brotherhood Makes All Men One.

Brotherhood Of Man

Histories Are As Perfect As The Historian Is Wise, And Is Gifted With An Eye And A Soul.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A Noble Book! All Men's Book!

Hero-worship Exists, Has Existed, And Will Forever Exist, Universally, Among Mankind.

The Leafy Blossoming Present Time Springs From The Whole Past, Remembered And Unrememberable.

No Man Is Born Without Ambitious Worldly Desires.

The Eye Sees What It Brings The Power To See.

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

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.

It Is Now Almost My Sole Rule Of Life To Clear Myself Of Cants And Formulas, As Of Poisonous Nessus Shirts.

To Me The Universe Was All Void Of Life, Of Purpose, Of Volition, Even Of Hostility; It Was One Huge, Dead, Immeasurable Steam-engine, Rolling On, In Its Dead Indifference, To Grind Me Limb From Limb. Oh Vast Gloomy, Solitary Golgotha, And Mill Of Death! Why Was The Living Banished Thither Companionless, Conscious? Why, If There Is No Devil; Nay, Unless The Devil Is Your God?

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

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.

The Beginning Of All Wisdom Is To Look Fixedly On Clothes, Or Even With Armed Eyesight, Till They Become Transparent.

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.

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

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

Reform, Like Charity, Must Begin At Home.

The Fine Arts Once Divorcing Themselves From Truth Are Quite Certain To Fall Mad, If They Do Not Die.

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

And Man's Little Life Has Duties That Are Great, That Are Alone Great, And Go Up To Heaven And Down To Hell.

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

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

True Humor Springs Not More From The Head Than From The Heart. It Is Not Contempt; Its Essence Is Love. It Issues Not In Laughter, But In Still Smiles, Which Lie Far Deeper.

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.

A Well-written Life Is Almost As Rare As A Well-spent One.

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

The Press Is The Fourth Estate Of The Realm.

The Genuine Essence Of Truth Never Dies.

Lies Exist Only To Be Extinguished.

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.

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.

The Actual Well Seen Is Ideal.

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

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.

Music Is Well Said To Be The Speech Of Angels; In Fact, Nothing Among The Utterances Allowed To Man Is Felt To Be So Divine. It Brings Us Near To The Infinite.

If You Look Deep Enough You Will See Music; The Heart Of Nature Being Everywhere Music.

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