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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
Like
Sure
Show
Probability
Understand
Accident
Given
Merit
Light
Test
Give
Tests
Little
Property
Nothing
Fame

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.
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If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.
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He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of virtuous living.
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Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
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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.
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The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble.
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Every man has a coward and hero in his soul.
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There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire.
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Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.
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Wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses which he is loved and blessed by.
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Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
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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.
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Good Christian people, here lies for you an inestimable loan take all heed thereof, in all carefulness, employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.
Thomas Carlyle
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Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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Cherish what is dearest while you have it near you, and wait not till it is far away. Blind and deaf that we are oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust clouds and dissonances of the moment, and all be made at last so mournfully clear and beautiful, when it is too late.
Thomas Carlyle
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A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.
Thomas Carlyle
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To the wisest man, wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles.
Thomas Carlyle
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Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle