Quote

There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone there is perpetual despair.

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
Actually
Sacredness
Hope
Idleness
Even
Perpetual
Work
Despair
Benighted
Always
Calling
Nobleness
Never
Works
Perennial
Men
Alone
Forgetful
High
Earnestly

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In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common human nature that has been developing itself. The actual truth is the sum of all these.
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It is meritorious to insist on forms religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one.
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Force, force, everywhere force we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot? [As used in his time, by the word force, Carlyle means energy.]
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True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.
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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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The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
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The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.
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Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.
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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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An everlasting lodestar, that beams the brighter in the heavens the darker here on earth grows the night.
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In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.
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Out of Eternity the new day is born Into Eternity at night will return.
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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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A word spoken in season, at the right moment is the mother of ages.
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Thought once awakened does not again slumber unfolds itself into a System of Thought grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.
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Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
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God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks.
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Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books!
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The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.
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History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
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