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What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?

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
Respect
Name
Inwardly
Names
Respectability
Use
Spoons
Art
Gigs
Many
Silver
Never
Thou
Men
Devil

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A man--be the heavens ever praised!--is sufficient for himself.
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Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.
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The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.
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Youth is to all the glad season of life but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.
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Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
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The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.
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True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
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The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
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To the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant
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The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.
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The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it.
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It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defeats than to boast of our attainments.
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Might and right do differ frightfully from hour to hour, but then centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.
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All evil is like a nightmare the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.
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To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.
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War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.
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A star is beautiful it affords pleasure, not from what it is to do, or to give, but simply by being what it is. It befits the heavens it has congruity with the mighty space in which it dwells. It has repose no force disturbs its eternal peace. It has freedom no obstruction lies between it and infinity.
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One monster there is in the world, the idle man.
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