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The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

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
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Meaning
Ensign
Highest
Extrinsic
Ever
Accidental
Men
Embraced
Cross
Crosses
Mets

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Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
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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.
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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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Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally, among mankind.
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Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
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He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.
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What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
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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.
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In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world the world's Priest -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.
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A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer.
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Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.
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Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.
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Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.
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It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.
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A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted 'on him.
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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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If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.
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Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.
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The press is the fourth estate of the realm.
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A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Thomas Carlyle