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Thomas Carlyle -
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A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road; a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose, if there be even a little worthiness in it. The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
Thomas Carlyle
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Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.
Thomas Carlyle
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A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man... A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man.
Thomas Carlyle
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Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this earth.
Thomas Carlyle
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If a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold greater when dead.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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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?
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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Show me the man you honor; I know by that symptom, better than by any other, what kind of man you yourself are. For you show me there what your ideal of manhood is; what kind of man you long inexpressibly to be.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.
Thomas Carlyle
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A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.
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!
Thomas Carlyle
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A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.
Thomas Carlyle
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Courtesy is the due of man to man; not of suit-of-clothes to suit-of-clothes.
Thomas Carlyle
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Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.
Thomas Carlyle
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Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?
Thomas Carlyle
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Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?
Thomas Carlyle
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A man's honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this if he is to communicate anything.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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Is man's civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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Quote of the day
Yet would we die as some have done: Beating a way for the rising sun.
Arna Bontemps
Thomas Carlyle
Creative Commons
Born:
December 4, 1795
Died:
February 5, 1881
(aged 85)
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