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. |
Manners are stronger than laws |
MARGARET FULLER: I accept the universe. CARLYLE: Gad! she'd better! |
Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a ''taxing-machine';' to the contented, a ''machine for securing property'.' Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable. |
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can. |
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against. |
Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another, and all against evil only. |
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite. |
Music is well said to be the speech of angels. |
Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid. |
Necessity dispenseth with decorum. |
Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness |
No age seemed the age of romance to itself. |
No conquest can ever become permanent which does not show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors. |
No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes. |