All Quotes

"It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him."

"All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming."

"[I]n the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great."

"At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers."

"Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one."

"Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for!"

"The Age of Miracles is forever here!"

"Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!"

"[T]his same Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all."

"In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;—guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time."

"There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there."

"For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things."

"The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,—fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that."

"This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognized as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men."

"Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth, a primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them."

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."

"Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised."

"All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books."

"It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us."

"The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke'; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming!"

"Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity."

"The true University of these days is a Collection of Books."

"By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die."

"He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem."

"His words ... like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command."

"I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words."

"As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."

"That old man eloquent."

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

"License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that must first be wise and good."

"What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste?"

"Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea."

"Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

"Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,"

"Where the bright seraphim in burning row Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow."

"A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him."

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?"

"And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!"

"Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If ever deed of honour did thee please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms."

"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground."

"Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie."

"Under the shady roof Of branching elm star-proof."

"Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race: Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, Which is no more than what is false and vain, And merely mortal dross."

"O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still."

"So little care they of beasts to make them men, that by their sorcerous doctrine of formalities, they take the way to transform them out of Christian men into judaizing beasts. Had they but taught the land, or suffered it to be taught, as Christ would it should have been in all plenteous dispensation of the word, then the poor mechanic might have so accustomed his ear to good teaching, as to have discerned between faithful teachers and false. But now, with a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness; just as the Pharisees their true fathers were wont, who could not endure that the people should be thought competent judges of Christ's doctrine, although we know they judged far better than those great rabbis: yet “this people,” said they, “that know not the law is accursed.”"

"Truth...never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth."

"Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live."

"Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam."

"Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law."