Life of Thomas Carlyle |
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Popular passages
Page 168 - Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane.
Page 68 - All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest is not there on its own account ; strictly taken, is not there at all; matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea, and body it forth.
Page 172 - Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods ; they alone surviving ; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time ! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind, — as a noble Mother ; as that Spartan Mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, " With it, my son, or upon it...
Page 171 - worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy...
Page 14 - Andreas would set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their gilding.
Page 168 - Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some foot-print of us is stamped in ; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van.
Page 70 - These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this lifeblood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart; but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth...
Page 169 - The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle of causes our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by all which the condition of its little...
Page 66 - Craigenputtock, an outlook from the back windows into more leafy regions, with here and there a red highpeaked old roof looking through, and see nothing of London except by day the summits of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and by night the gleam of the great Babylon, affronting the peaceful skies.
Page 100 - Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.