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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.

-Thomas Carlyle

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We Were Wise Indeed,

Thomas Carlyle

...

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.

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

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.

Of All God's Creatures, Man Alone Is Poor.

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

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

Under All Speech That Is Good For Anything There Lies A Silence That Is Better, Silence Is Deep As Eternity; Speech Is Shallow As Time.

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

Genius Is An Infinite Capacity For Taking Pains.

Only Perhaps In The United States, Which Alone Of Countries Can Do Without Governing,every Man Being At Least Able To Live, And Move Off Into The Wilderness, Let Congress Jargon As It Will,can Such A Form Of So-called Government Continue For Any Length Of Time To Torment Men With The Semblance, When The Indispensable Substance Is Not There.

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.

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.

Affectation Is The Product Of Falsehood.

That A Parliament, Especially A Parliament With Newspaper Reporters Firmly Established In It, Is An Entity Which By Its Very Nature Cannot Do Work, But Can Do Talk Only.

Midas-eared Mammonism, Double-barrelled Dilettantism, And Their Thousand Adjuncts And Corollaries, Are Not The Law By Which God Almighty Has Appointed This His Universe To Go.

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.

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

The Eye Sees What It Brings The Power To See.

The Sincere Alone Can Recognize Sincerity.

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

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

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.

Weak Eyes Are Fondest Of Glittering Objects.

War Is A Quarrel Between Two Thieves Too Cowardly To Fight Their Own Battle; Therefore They Take Boys From One Village And Another Village, Stick Them Into Uniforms, Equip Them With Guns, And Let Them Loose Like Wild Beasts Against One Other.

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.

A Man Perfects Himself By Working.

Habit And Imitation--there Is Nothing More Perennial In Us Than These Two. They Are The Source Of All Working, And All Apprenticeship, Of All Practice, And All Learning, In This World.

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.

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

Silence Is As Deep As Eternity, Speech A Shallow As Time.

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

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

Painful For A Person Is Rebellious Independence, Only In Loving Companionship With His Associates Does A Person Feel Safe: Only In Reverently Bowing Down Before The Higher Does A Person Feel Exalted.

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

Science Must Have Originated In The Feeling That Something Was Wrong.

He Who Has No Vision Of Eternity Has No Hold On Time.

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.

Friend, Hast Thou Considered The "rugged, All-nourishing Earth," As Sophocles Well Names Her; How She Feeds The Sparrow On The Housetop, Much More Her Darling Man?

The King Is The Man Who Can.

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

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.

All That A University Or Final Highest School. Can Do For Us Is Still But What The First School Began Doing--teach Us To Read. We Learn To Read In Various Languages, In Various Sciences; We Learn The Alphabet And Letters Of All Manner Of Books. But The Place Where We Are To Get Knowledge, Even Theoretic Knowledge, Is The Books Themselves. It Depends On What We Read, After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

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

Speech Is Great, But Silence Is Greater.

The Merit Of Originality Is Not Novelty; It Is Sincerity.

If I Had My Way, The World Would Hear A Pretty Stern Command - Exit Christ.

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

Also, What Mountains Of Dead Ashes, Wreck And Burnt Bones, Does Assiduous Pedantry Dig Up From The Past Time And Name It History.

The Public Is Anold Woman.let Her Maunderand Mumble.

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

The English Are A Dumb People. They Can Do Great Acts, But Not Describe Them.

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?

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

Focus And Concentration

How, Without Clothes, Could We Possess The Master Organ, Soul's Seat And True Pineal Gland Of The Body Social--i Mean A Purse?

Oblivion Is The Dark Page, Whereon Memory Writes Her Light-beam Characters, And Makes Them Legible; Were It All Light, Nothing Could Be Read There, Any More Than If It Were All Darkness.

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.

Dishonesty Is The Raw Material Not Of Quacks Only, But Also In Great Part Dupes.

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.

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

In The Poorest Cottage Are Books: Is One Book, Wherein For Several Thousands Of Years The Spirit Of Man Has Found Light, And Nourishment, And An Interpreting Response To Whatever Is Deepest In Him.

Only The Person Of Worth Can Recognize The Worth In Others.

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

Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden.

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.

The Cut Of A Garment Speaks Of Intellect And Talent And The Color Of Temperament And Heart.

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

Do Not Be Embarrassed By Your Mistakes. Nothing Can Teach Us Better Than Our Understanding Of Them. This Is One Of The Best Ways Of Self-education.

All Work, Even Cotton-spinning, Is Noble; Work Is Alone Noble.

Infinite Is The Help Man Can Yield To Man.

Parliament Will Train You To Talk; And Above All Things To Hear, With Patience, Unlimited Quantities Of Foolish Talk.

Nothing Is More Terrible Than Activity Without Insight.

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

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.

He Who Could Foresee Affairs Three Days In Advance Would Be Rich For Thousands Of Years.

If You Will Believe Me, You Who Are Young, Yours Is The Golden Season Of Life. As You Have Heard It Called, So It Verily Is, The Seed-time Of Life; In Which, If You Do Not Sow, Or If You Sow Tares Instead Of Wheat, You Cannot Expect To Reap Well Afterwards, And You Will Arrive At Little. And In The Course Of Years When You Come To Look Back, If You Have Not Done What You Have Heard From Your Advisers,-and Among Many Counsellors There Is Wisdom,-you Will Bitterly Repent When It Is Too Late.

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

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

Everywhere The Human Soul Stands Between A Hemisphere Of Light And Another Of Darkness On The Confines Of Two Everlasting Empires, - Necessity And Free Will.

At Worst, Is Not This An Unjust World, Full Of Nothing But Beasts Of Prey, Four-footed Or Two-footed?

Courtesy Is The Due Of Man To Man; Not Of Suit-of-clothes To Suit-of-clothes.

What, In The Devil's Name, Is The Use Of Respectability, With Never So Many Gigs And Silver Spoons, If Thou Inwardly Art The Pitifulness Of All Men?

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.

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?

Without Kindness There Can Be No True Joy.

Freedom Is The One Purport, Wisely Aimed At, Or Unwisely, Of All Man's Struggles, Toilings And Sufferings, In This Earth.

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 Person With A Clear Purpose Will Make Progress, Even On The Roughest Road. A Person With No Purpose Will Make No Progress, Even On The Smoothest Road.

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

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.

They Only Are Wise Who Know That They Know Nothing.

History Is The Essence Of Innumerable Biographies.

Of Our Thinking It Is But The Upper Surface That We Shape Into Articulate Thought; Underneath The Region Of Argument And Conscious Discourse Lies The Region Of Meditation.

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

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.

Violence Does Even Justice Unjustly.

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.

Hunger Whets Everything, Especially Suspicion And Indignation.

Endurance Is Patience Concentrated.

The Greatest Security Against Sin Is To Be Shocked At Its Presence.

The Ideal Is In Thyself, The Impediments Too Is In Thyself.

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

Wonder Is The Basis Of Worship.

No Ghost Was Every Seen By Two Pair Of Eyes.

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

Nature Is The Time-vesture Of God That Reveals Him To The Wise, And Hides Him From The Foolish.

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

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."

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.

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

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

Superstition! That Horrid Incubus Which Dwelt In Darkness, Shunning The Light, With All Its Racks, And Poison Chalices, And Foul Sleeping Draughts, Is Passing Away Without Return. Religion Cannot Pass Away. The Burning Of A Little Straw May Hide The Stars Of The Sky; But The Stars Are There And Will Reappear.

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.

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.

Acorns Are Planted Silently By Some Unnoticed Breeze.

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

What An Enormous Magnifier Is Tradition! How A Thing Grows In The Human Memory And In The Human Imagination, When Love, Worship, And All That Lies In The Human Heart, Is There To Encourage It

Caution Is The Lower Story Of Prudence.

In A Certain Sense All Men Are Historians.

With Union Grounded On Falsehood And Ordering Us To Speak And Act Lies, We Will Not Have Anything To Do. Peace? A Brutal Lethargy Is Peaceable; The Noisome Is Peaceable. We Hope For A Living Peace, Not A Dead One!

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

No Man Is Born Without Ambitious Worldly Desires.

The Nobleness Of Silence. The Highest Melody Dwells Only In Silence,--the Sphere Melody, The Melody Of Health.

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.

One Monster There Is In The World, The Idle Man.

Man Is A Tool-using Animal. Without Tools He Is Nothing, With Tools He Is All.

The Mystical Bond Of Brotherhood Makes All Men Brothers.

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

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

Success In Life, In Anything, Depends Upon The Number Of Persons That One Can Make Himself Agreeable To.

Success In Life

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.

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

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.

The All Of Things Is An Infinite Conjugation Of The Verb To Do .

Not On Morality, But On Cookery, Let Us Build Our Stronghold: There Brandishing Our Frying-pan, As Censer, Let Us Offer Sweet Incense To The Devil, And Live At Ease On The Fat Things He Has Provided For His Elect!

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.

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

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

Earnestness Alone Makes Life Eternity.

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

The Man Who Cannot Wonder, Who Does Not Habitually Wonder (and Worship), Were He President Of Innumerable Royal Societies, And Carried The Whole Mecanique Celeste And Hegel's Philosophy, And The Epitome Of All Laboratories And Observatories With Their Results, In His Single Head, Is But A Pair Of Spectacles Behind Which There Is No Eye. Let Those Who Have Eyes Look Through Him, Then He May Be Useful.

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.

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

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

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

Worship Is Transcendent Wonder.

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.

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.

A Thinking Man Is The Worst Enemy The Prince Of Darkness Can Have; Every Time Such An One Announces Himself, I Doubt Not There Runs A Shudder Through The Nether Empire; And New Emissaries Are Trained With New Tactics, To, If Possible, Entrap And Hoodwink And Handcuff Him.

No Age Seemed The Age Of Romance To Itself.

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.

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

I Do Not Believe In The Collective Wisdom Of Individual Ignorance.

Love Not Pleasure; Love God.

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.

Wondrous Is The Strength Of Cheerfulness, Altogether Past Calculation Its Powers Of Endurance.

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

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

God Almighty Never Created A Man Half As Wise As He Looks.

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

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

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.

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

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

Properly Speaking, All True Work Is Religion.

A Background Of Wrath, Which Can Be Stirred Up To The Murderous Infernal Pitch, Does Lie In Every Man.

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

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

Originality Is A Thing We Constantly Clamour For, And Constantly Quarrel With; As If, Observes Our Author Himself, Any Originality But Our Own Could Be Expected To Content Us! In Fact All Strange Thing Are Apt, Without Fault Of Theirs, To Estrange Us At First View, And Unhappily Scarcely Anything Is Perfectly Plain, But What Is Also Perfectly Common.

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

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!

Scarcely Two Hundred Years Back Can Fame Recollect Articulately At All; And There She But Maunders And Mumbles.

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!

What We Become Depends On What We Read After All Of The Professors Have Finished With Us. The Greatest University Of All Is A Collection Of Books.

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

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.

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

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.

Great Men Are The Inspired Texts Of That Divine Book Of Revelations, Whereof A Chapter Is Completed From Epoch To Epoch, And By Some Named History.

Produce, Produce! Were It But The Pitifulest, Infinitesimal Fraction Of A Product, Produce It In God's Name. 'tis The Utmost Thou Hast In Thee? Out With It Then! Up, Up! Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth To Do, Do It With Thy Whole Might.

All Deep Things Are Song. It Seems Somehow The Very Central Essence Of Us, Song; As If All The Rest Were But Wrappages And Hulls!

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.

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

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.

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

O Thou That Pinest In The Imprisonment Of The Actual, And Criest Bitterly To The Gods For A Kingdom Wherein To Rule And Create, Know This For A Truth: The Thing Thou Seekest Is Already Here, "here Or Nowhere," Couldst Thou Only See.

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

In Books Lies The Soul Of The Whole Past Time; The Articulate Audible Voice Of The Past, When The Body And Material Substance Of It Has Altogether Vanished Like A Dream.

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

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.

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

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

We Have Our Little Theory On All Human And Divine Things. Poetry, The Workings Of Genius Itself, Which, In All Times, With One Or Another Meaning, Has Been Called Inspiration, And Held To Be Mysterious And Inscrutable, Is No Longer Without Its Scientific Exposition. The Building Of The Lofty Rhyme Is Like Any Other Masonry Or Bricklaying: We Have Theories Of Its Rise, Height, Decline And Fall -- Which Latter, It Would Seem, Is Now Near, Among All People.

No Man At Bottom Means Injustice; It Is Always For Some Obscure Distorted Image Of A Right That He Contends: An Obscure Image Diffracted, Exaggerated, In The Wonderfulest Way By Natural Dimness And Selfishness; Getting Tenfold More Diffracted By Exasperation Of Contest, Till At Length It Become All But Irrecognis-able.

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