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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.

-Thomas Carlyle

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They Have Their Belief,

Thomas Carlyle

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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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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.

An Everlasting Lodestar, That Beams The Brighter In The Heavens The Darker Here On Earth Grows The Night.

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

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.

It Is Through Symbols That Man Consciously Or Unconsciously Lives, Works And Has His Being.

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Happy The People Whose Annals Are Blank In History Books!

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

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

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

The Builder Of This Universe Was Wise, He Plann'd All Souls, All Systems, Planets, Particles: The Plan He Shap'd All Worlds And Æons By, Was-heavens!-was Thy Small Nine-and-thirty Articles!

Just In Ratio As Knowledge Increases, Faith Diminishes.

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

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

To A Shower Of Gold Most Things Are Penetrable.

This London City, With All Of Its Houses, Palaces, Steam-engines, Cathedrals, And Huge Immeasurable Traffic An Tumult, What Is It But A Thought, But Millions Of Thoughts Made Into One-a Huge Immeasurable Spirit Of A Thought, Embodied In Brick, In Iron, Smoke, Dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, And The Rest Of It! Not A Brick Was Made But Some Man Had To Think Of The Making Of That Brick.

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.

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Cash-payment Is Not The Sole Nexus Of Man With Man.

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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.

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.

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.

There Is No Life Of A Man, Faithfully Recorded, But Is A Heroic Poem Of Its Sort, Rhymed Or Unrhymed.

Insurrection, Never So Necessary, Is A Most Sad Necessity; And Governors Who Wait For That To Instruct Them Are Surely Getting Into The Fatalest Course.

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

A Man Perfects Himself By Working. Foul Jungles Are Cleared Away, Fair Seed-fields Rise Instead, And Stately Cities; And With The Man Himself First Ceases To Be A Jungle, And Foul Unwholesome Desert Thereby. The Man Is Now A Man.

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

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!

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

The Persians Are Called The French Of The East; We Will Call The Arabs Oriental Italians. A Gifted Noble People; A People Of Wildstrong Feelings, And Of Iron Restraint Over These: The Characteristic Of Noblemindedness, Of Genius.

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

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Histories Are A Kind Of Distilled Newspapers.

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Great Is Wisdom; Infinite Is The Value Of Wisdom. It Cannot Be Exaggerated; It Is The Highest Achievement Of Man.

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Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.

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All That Mankind Has Done, Thought Or Been: It Is Lying As In Magic Preservation In The Pages Of Books.

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

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What You See, But Can't See Over Is As Good As Infinite.

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Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom.

History After All Is The True Poetry.

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

One Is Hardly Sensible Of Fatigue While He Marches To Music.

The World Is An Old Woman, And Mistakes Any Gilt Farthing For A Gold Coin; Whereby Being Often Cheated, She Will Thenceforth Trust Nothing But The Common Copper.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

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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.

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

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The Sincere Alone Can Recognize Sincerity.

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

For Man Is Not The Creature And Product Of Mechanism; But, In A Far Truer Sense, Its Creator And Producer.

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

To Each Is Given A Certain Inward Talent, A Certain Outward Environment Or Fortune; To Each By Wisest Combination Of These Two, A Certain Maximum Capacity.

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.

Evil, Once Manfully Fronted, Ceases To Be Evil; There Is Generous Battle-hope In Place Of Dead, Passive Misery; The Evil Itself Has Become A Kind Of Good.

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

Poetry, Therefore, We Will Call Musical Thought.

Neither In Tailoring Nor In Legislating Does Man Proceed By Mere Accident.

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.

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

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

In Idleness There Is A Perpetual Despair.

There Are But Two Ways Of Paying Debt: Increase Of Industry In Raising Income, Increase Of Thrift In Laying Out.

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.

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

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

A Person Who Is Gifted Sees The Essential Point And Leaves The Rest As Surplus.

Focus And Concentration

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

Roguery Is Thought By Some To Be Cunning And Laughable: It Is Neither; It Is Devilish.

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

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

Laughter Is The Cipher Key Wherewith We Decipher The Whole Man

Originality Is A Thing We Constantly Clamour For, And Constantly Quarrel With.

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All Comes Out Even At The End Of The Day.

The End Of The Day

Man Is A Tool-using Animal.

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

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

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In Books Lies The Soul Fo The Whole Past Time.

Trust Not The Heart Of That Man For Whom Old Clothes Are Not Venerable.

Love Is Ever The Beginning Of Knowledge As Fire Is Of Light.

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

It Is The Heart Always That Sees, Before The Head Can See.

Out Of The Lowest Depths There Is A Path To The Loftiest Heights.

See Deep Enough, And You See Musically.

Music And Healing

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

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

The Man Of Life Upright Has A Guiltless Heart, Free From All Dishonest Deeds Or Thought Of Vanity.

All True Work Is Sacred. In All True Work, Were It But True Hand Work, There Is Something Of Divineness. Labor, Wide As The Earth, Has Its Summit In Heaven.

It Is A Fact Which Escapes No One, That, Generally Speaking, Whoso Is Acquainted With His Worth Has But A Little Stock To Cultivate Acquaintance With.

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.

He That Has A Secret Should Not Only Hide It, But Hide That He Has It To Hide.

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

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Work Is The Grand Cure Of All The Maladies And Miseries That Ever Beset Mankind.

Laughter Is One Of The Very Privileges Of Reason, Being Confined To The Human Species.

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

We Arc The Miracle Of Miracles, The Great Inscrutable Mystery Of God.

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Biography Is The Only True History.

It Is Meritorious To Insist On Forms; Religion And All Else Naturally Clothes Itself In Forms. Everywhere The Formed World Is The Only Habitable One.

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

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When We Can Drain The Ocean Into Mill-ponds, And Bottle Up The Force Of Gravity, To Be Sold By Retail, In Gas Jars; Then May We Hope To Comprehend The Infinitudes Of Man's Soul Under Formulas Of Profit And Loss; And Rule Over This Too, As Over A Patent Engine, By Checks, And Valves, And Balances.

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.

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

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

No Ghost Was Every Seen By Two Pair Of Eyes.

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

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!

In A Symbol There Is Concealment And Yet Revelation: Here Therefore, By Silence And By Speech Acting Together, Comes A Double Significance. In The Symbol Proper, What We Can Call A Symbol, There Is Ever, More Or Less Distinctly And Directly, Some Embodiment And Revelation Of The Infinite; The Infinite Is Made To Blend Itself With The Finite, To Stand Visible, And As It Were, Attainable There. By Symbols, Accordingly, Is Man Guided And Commanded, Made Happy, Made Wretched.

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.

The Greatest Of All Heroes Is One--whom We Do Not Name Here! Let Sacred Silence Meditate That Sacred Matter; You Will Find It The Ultimate Perfection Of A Principle Extant Throughout Man's Whole History On Earth.

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?

Out Of Eternity The New Day Is Born; Into Eternity At Night Will Return.

No Age Seemed The Age Of Romance To Itself.

The Mathematics Of High Achievement

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.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Pretend To Understand The Universe - It's A Great Deal Bigger Than I Am.

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.

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.

The Real Use Of Gunpowder Is To Make All Men Tall.

Stop A Moment, Cease Your Work, And Look Around You.

In A Different Time, In A Different Place, It Is Always Some Other Side Of Our Common Human Nature That Has Been Developing Itself. The Actual Truth Is The Sum Of All These.

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

Innumerable Are The Illusions And Legerdemain-tricks Of Custom: But Of All Of These, Perhaps The Cleverest Is Her Knack Of Persuading Us That The Miraculous, By Simple Repetition, Ceases To Be Miraculous.

If You Do Not Wish A Man To Do A Thing, You Had Better Get Him To Talk About It; For The More Men Talk, The More Likely They Are To Do Nothing Else.

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