Quote

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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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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No violent extreme endures.
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There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
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Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them.
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The purpose of man is in action not thought.
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Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business: and gives in the long run a net result of zero.
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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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The goal of yesterday will be our starting-point to-morrow.
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Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.
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Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
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God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks.
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Speech is great, but silence is greater.
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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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Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation.
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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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Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.
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All history . . . is an inarticulate Bible.
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Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form is a wrapping of traditions, hearsay's, and mere words.
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Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.
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The times are very bad. Very well, you are there to make them better.
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