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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.

Thomas Carlyle

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Thomas Carlyle
Age: 85 †
Born: 1795
Born: December 4
Died: 1881
Died: February 5
Essayist
Historian
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Mathematician
Novelist
Philosopher
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Philosopher of Chelsea
Show
Probability
Understand
Accident
Given
Merit
Light
Test
Give
Tests
Little
Property
Nothing
Fame
Like
Sure

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
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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.
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Pain was not given thee merely to be miserable under learn from it, turn it to account.
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The mystical bond of brotherhood makes all men brothers.
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Happy season of childhood! Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother that visitest the poor man's hut With auroral radiance and for thy nursling hast provided a soft swathing of love and infinite hope wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round by sweetest dreams!
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Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.
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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.
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What I loved in the man was his health, his unity with himself all people and all things seemed to find their quite peaceable adjustment with him, not a proud domineering one, as after doubtful contest, but a spontaneous-looking peaceable, even humble one.
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Thought will not work except in silence.
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Society is founded on hero-worship.
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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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I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
Thomas Carlyle
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The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
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It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.
Thomas Carlyle
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Without kindness there can be no true joy.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.
Thomas Carlyle
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Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?
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Thought once awakened does not again slumber unfolds itself into a System of Thought grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.
Thomas Carlyle
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It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.
Thomas Carlyle