The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.
Interpretation
Even in difficult times, the concept of eternity offers solace and perspective.
This quote by Thomas Carlyle suggests that when life and time present challenges and hostility, the idea of eternity can provide a sense of grandeur and kindness. It implies that a broader perspective, such as thinking about eternity, can help us endure and find meaning amidst hardships because it elevates our understanding beyond immediate struggles.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity, one might quote this to inspire resilience.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thirty millions, mostly fools.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?
Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.
When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.
I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
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