Quote

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.

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
Gold
Farthing
Trust
Gilt
Mistake
Copper
Common
Whereby
Woman
Coin
Often
Cheated
Nothing
Coins
World
Mistakes
Thenceforth

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In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him.
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Thirty millions, mostly fools.
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There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong.
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Nature admits no lie.
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What this country needs is a man who knows God other than by heresay.
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Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.
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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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Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.
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Thought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain?
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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 a man like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.
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Obedience is our universal duty and destiny wherein whoso will not bend must break too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that would, in this world of ours, is a mere zero to should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to shall.
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The purpose of man is in action not thought.
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Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of courage as frost sufficiently intense, according to the poet Milton, will burn.
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The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
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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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Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
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