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.
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.
We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack.
They're so cold, these scholars! May lightning strike their food so that their mouths learn how to eat fire!
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.
It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.