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A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

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
First
Fair
Foul
Work
Fields
Jungle
Perfects
Men
Instead
Seed
Unwholesome
Cities
Desert
Jungles
Working
Seeds
Stately
Society
Cease
Cleared
Away
Fairs
Ceases
Firsts
Rise
Thereby

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.
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The meaning of song goes deep. Who in logical words can explain the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into that!
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The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement.
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Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.
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Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another nor could it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.
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We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
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Be not a slave of words.
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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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The age of miracles is forever here.
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It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.
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Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet not so the transition from the former to the latter.
Thomas Carlyle
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Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.
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Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.
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Blessed be the God's voice for it is true, and falsehoods have to cease before it!
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Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day?
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Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!
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Without kindness there can be no true joy.
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Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
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The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,honest work, which you intend getting done.
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It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defeats than to boast of our attainments.
Thomas Carlyle