Quote#World
Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's…
Quote byThomas Carlyle · 1795–1881
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Hero as Divinity.
English (original)
Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks.
— Thomas Carlyle
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Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
[I am] fast becoming a patriot of the most decided stamp. Scornfully as I used to speak and think of Scotland in my hours of bitterness and irritation, I never fail to stand up manfully in defence of it thro' thick and thin, whenever a …
Not all his men may sever this, It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls; My whinstone house my castle is— I have my own four walls.
Again, and again, we say, the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.
A man's honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this, if he is to communicate anything.