Quote

The vulgarity of inanimate things requires time to get accustomed to but living, breathing, bustling, plotting, planning, human vulgarity is a species of moral ipecacuanha, enough to destroy any comfort.

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
Humans
Planning
Enough
Destroy
Things
Requires
Bustling
Time
Species
Plotting
Comfort
Inanimate
Moral
Vulgarity
Living
Accustomed
Human
Breathing

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?
Thomas Carlyle
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If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
Thomas Carlyle
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Superstition! that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, with all its racks, and poison chalices, and foul sleeping draughts, is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky but the stars are there and will reappear.
Thomas Carlyle
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The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.
Thomas Carlyle
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War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.
Thomas Carlyle
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There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire.
Thomas Carlyle
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The mystical bond of brotherhood makes all men brothers.
Thomas Carlyle
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Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
Thomas Carlyle
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There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong.
Thomas Carlyle
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Worship is transcendent wonder.
Thomas Carlyle
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There is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
Thomas Carlyle
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True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.]
Thomas Carlyle
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By nature man hates change seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
Thomas Carlyle
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When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.
Thomas Carlyle
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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a Life-purpose... Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is... Even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work!
Thomas Carlyle
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The civil authority, or that part of it which remained faithful to their trust and true to the ends of the covenant, did, in answer to their consciences, turn out a tyrant, in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honor, and all tyrants in the world look at with fear.
Thomas Carlyle
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It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.
Thomas Carlyle
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Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right he will grow daily more and more right. It is at bottom the condition on which all men have to cultivate themselves.
Thomas Carlyle
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A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.
Thomas Carlyle