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Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business: and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

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
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Writer
Philosopher of Chelsea
Running
Canceling
Nature
Zero
Self
Historical
Giving
Result
Long
Gives
Democracy
Results
Business

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There is something in man which your science cannot satisfy.
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Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.
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Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.
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Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.
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Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence of worth for more than one day?
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Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
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Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.
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Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.
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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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If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
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Great men are the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain.
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Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful yet ever needful and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.
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Necessity dispenseth with decorum.
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A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.
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All work is as seed sown it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
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Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
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Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. America, too, will have to strain its energies, crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons, and mud-demons, before it can become a babitation for the gods.
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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.
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The civil authority, or that part of it which remained faithful to their trust and true to the ends of the covenant, did, in answer to their consciences, turn out a tyrant, in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honor, and all tyrants in the world look at with fear.
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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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