The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair.
Interpretation
This quote criticizes the blind adherence to market forces and individual greed, suggesting it leads to despair.
Thomas Carlyle's quote expresses a profound skepticism toward laissez-faire economic principles and the unrestrained pursuit of personal gain, whether in terms of wealth, pleasure, or recognition. He warns that allowing egotism and greed to guide society is akin to endorsing a destructive ideology that ultimately results in despair rather than fulfillment or prosperity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethical implications of capitalism.
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.
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.
This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?
Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want.
Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
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