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Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

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
Mark
Creatures
Mortar
Circumstances
Nearer
Instead
Apathy
Saying
Circumstance
Action
Architect
Would
Creature
Men
Empathy

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Show me the man you honor I know by that symptom, better than by any other, what kind of man you yourself are. For you show me there what your ideal of manhood is what kind of man you long inexpressibly to be.
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Lord Bacon could as easily have created the planets as he could have written Hamlet.
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O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.
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If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
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The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
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Nothing ever happens but once in all this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning.
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The best lesson which we get from the tragedy of Karbala is that Husain and his companions were rigid believers in God. They illustrated that the numerical superiority does not count when it comes to the truth and the falsehood. The victory of Husain, despite his minority, marvels me!
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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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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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If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
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Once the mind has been expanded by a big idea, it will never go back to its original state.
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The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent.
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Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.
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There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.
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There is but one temple in this Universe: The Body. We speak to God whenever we lay our hands upon it.
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Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.
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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 man.
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Laws, written, if not on stone tables, yet on the azure of infinitude, in the inner heart of God's creation, certain as life, certain as death, are there, and thou shalt not disobey them.
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Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.
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God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks.
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