Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded! — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create,… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession;… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
Let Time and Chance combine, combine! Let Time and Chance combine! The fairest love from heaven above, That love of yours was mine, My… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share
