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Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

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
Universal
History
Great
Men
World
Accomplished
Bottom
Worked

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In the huge mass of evil as it rolls and swells, there is ever some good working toward deliverance and triumph.
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The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
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Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
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The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
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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!
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The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.
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All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word.
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The leafy blossoming present time springs from the whole past, remembered and unrememberable.
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Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately at all and there she but maunders and mumbles.
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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.
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Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation.
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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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Parliament will train you to talk and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
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This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
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Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
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All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.
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A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
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Infinite is the help man can yield to man.
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We do everything by custom, even believe by it our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.
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A pygmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.
Thomas Carlyle