Thomas Carlyle
Scottish essayist and historian (1795 to 1881); author of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.
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Their wordsFor, as I take it, 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.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWe see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsQuackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die!
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsSociety is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a Heroarchy (Government of Heroes),—or a Hierarchy, for it is "sacred" enough withal!
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsNo sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsOur current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsA false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsI should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsI confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsAt bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIndian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give up our Shakspeare!
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWithout sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefulest of things.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsIt is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsThe true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsPrinting, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsWe will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Our reading
Raising a country's ablest man to the supreme place and revering him gives it a perfect government
Their wordsFind in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsNo, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsI find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort.
↗On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840-1841)gutenberg.org All 20 from this book
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Their wordsThe heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound-interest.
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