The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History is a powerful narrative that unfolds over time, illuminated by the guiding lights of significance and permanence.
In this quote, Thomas Carlyle compares history to a grand play staged in the theater of time, where events are the actors, and the constant presence of the sun symbolizes the light of understanding that shines on humanityβs collective past. The mention of 'eternity for a background' suggests that history is not merely fleeting moments, but rather part of an ongoing saga that shapes our existence, indicating the importance of learning from our past and appreciating the vastness of time.
Themes
HistoryTimePhilosophyDramaEternity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a history class to encourage students to see the significance of historical events.
More from Thomas Carlyle
All quotes βThirty millions, mostly fools.
Thomas CarlyleRead
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Thomas CarlyleRead
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.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Thomas CarlyleRead
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.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Similar quotes
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
Walt WhitmanRead
It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.
Frederick BuechnerRead
This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.
W. G. SebaldRead
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.
H. P. LovecraftRead
No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.
Paulo CoelhoRead