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Government is emphatically a machine: to the discontented a taxing machine, to the contented a machine for securing property.

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
Liberty
Emphatically
Government
Discontented
Taxing
Securing
Contented
Machine
Machines
Property

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Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.
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Lord Bacon could as easily have created the planets as he could have written Hamlet.
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A fair day's wage for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
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The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it.
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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.
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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.
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Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.
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Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
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How, without clothes, could we possess the master organ, soul's seat and true pineal gland of the body social--I mean a purse?
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To the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant
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Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?
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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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The greatest mistake is to imagine that we never err.
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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.
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Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive the length of your tether is now pretty well run and I must request you to talk a little lower in the future.
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May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.
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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.
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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.
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There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed.
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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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