The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the profound sadness of an individual who desires to work but cannot find employment, emphasizing social inequity.
Thomas Carlyle's quote reflects on the heartbreaking reality of those who are eager to contribute to society through work but are thwarted by circumstances beyond their control. It underscores the disparities in opportunity that can leave honest, hardworking individuals in despair, showcasing a stark illustration of how fate can be unfair to the deserving.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech addressing unemployment rates in a community.
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'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine.
Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.
I mourn my old life here. We barely scraped by, but I knew where I fit in, I knew what my place was in the tightly interwoven fabric that was our life. I wish I could go back to it because, in retrospect, it seems so secure compared to now, when I am so rich and famous and so hated by the authorities in the capitol.
My only extravagance in life is my sailboat. I'm bonkers about that, but other than that, I don't spend money on myself.
I missed a whole cycle of childhood, but I've never used it as a device for self-pity.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
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