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Our grandly business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly
at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Topic: Action
Source: Essays--Signs of the Times
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The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with
new.
Topic: Action
Source: Essays--Signs of the Times
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Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Topic: Action
Source: None
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No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than
himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at
all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.
Topic: Admiration
Source: Heroes and Hero Worship
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Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can
stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Topic: Adversity
Source: Heroes and Hero Worship (lecture 5)
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The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
Topic: Books
Source: None
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The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Topic: Business
Source: None
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To-day is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works
and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue
always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful;
and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.
Topic: Change
Source: Essays--Characteristics
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We are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgment
of any man or thing, it is useful, nay, essential, to see his
good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
Topic: Character
Source: Essays--Goethe
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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. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.
Topic: Character
Source: None
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Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance--the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it ;better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.
Topic: Cheerfulness
Source: None
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Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597 The Christian must be consumed with the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Martin Luther, Teacher, Reformer, 1546 It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils... Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that, as through life and to death he firmly did.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Feast of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, Martyr, 1980 Commemoration of Paul Couturier, Priest, Ecumenist, 1953 Supply-and-demand, -- alas! For what noble work was there ever yet any audible demand in that poor sense? The man of Macedonia, speaking in vision to the Apostle Paul, "Come over and help us", did not specify what rate of wages he would give.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564 Sweep away the illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to the far-distant Mover. The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.
Topic: Civilization
Source: None
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Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
Topic: Cleverness
Source: None
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The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Topic: Creativity
Source: None
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We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.
Topic: Custom
Source: None
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Is not every meanest day the confluence of two eternities?
Topic: Day
Source: French Revolution (pt. I, bk. VI, ch. V)
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So here hath been dawning
Another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?
Out of eternity
This new day is born,
Into eternity
At night will return.
Topic: Day
Source: To-day
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Day of wrath that day of burning,
Seer and Sibyl speak concerning,
All the world to ashes turning.
[Lat., Dies irae, dies illa!
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sybilla.]
Topic: Day
Source: To-day
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All comes out even at the end of the day.
Topic: Day
Source: To-day
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The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Topic: Decision
Source: None
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Every noble work is at first impossible.
Topic: Diligence
Source: None
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The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.
Topic: Doubt
Source: None
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What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
Topic: Education
Source: None
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Endurance is patience concentrated.
Topic: Endurance
Source: None
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Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the
English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!
Topic: England
Source: Essays--Richter
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A certain man has called us, "of all peoples the wisest in
action," but he added, "the stupidest in speech."
Topic: England
Source: The Nigger Question
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This Mirabeau's work, then is done. He sleeps with the primeval
giants. He has gone over to the majority: "Abiit ad plures."
Topic: Epitaphs
Source: Essay on Mirabeau (close)
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In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in
it what the eye brings means of seeing.
Topic: Eyes
Source: Hist. of the French Revolution (vol. I, p. 5), (People's ed.)
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Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
Topic: Eyes
Source: None
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To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.
Topic: Faith
Source: None
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Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a
probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man.
Topic: Fame
Source: Essay--Goethe
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Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately
at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles.
Topic: Fame
Source: Past and Present (ch. XVII)
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When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you
will command the attention of the world.
Topic: Fame
Source: Past and Present (ch. XVII)
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After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument
than why I have one.
Topic: Fame
Source: Past and Present (ch. XVII)
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The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Topic: Fault
Source: None
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The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Topic: Faults
Source: Heroes and Hero Worship (ch. II)
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Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but
what we do.
Topic: Gain
Source: Essays--Goethe's Helena
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Genius . . . means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
Topic: Genius
Source: Frederick the Great (bk. IV, ch. III)
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No good Book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at
first.
Topic: Goodness
Source: Essays--Novalis
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In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.
Topic: Government
Source: None
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It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my
hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
Topic: Gravity
Source: Sartor Resartus III
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We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of
greatness.
Topic: Greatness
Source: Essays--Characteristics (vol. III)
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Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is
because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning
he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
Topic: Greatness
Source: Sartor Resartus--The Everlasting Yea (bk. II, ch. IX)
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No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
Topic: Greatness
Source: None
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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 laugther, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. -Thomas Carlyle.
Topic: Heart-quotes
Source: None
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Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.
Topic: Heroes
Source: Heroes and Hero-Worship (lecture I)
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