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To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

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
Would
Defeat
Conscience
Neither
Victory
Sinned
Songs
Celebrated
Clear
Utter
Song
Unknown
Never
Triumph

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What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.
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The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by, Was-Heavens!-was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!
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The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it.
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Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
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It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
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Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.
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The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.
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The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth.
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A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
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I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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Out of the lowest depths there is a path to the loftiest heights.
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No violent extreme endures.
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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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If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
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He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.
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Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind.
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Happy season of childhood! Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother that visitest the poor man's hut With auroral radiance and for thy nursling hast provided a soft swathing of love and infinite hope wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round by sweetest dreams!
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Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle
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No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.
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The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
Thomas Carlyle