The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mistakes are valuable lessons that contribute to our learning and growth.
This quote emphasizes the importance of embracing our mistakes rather than feeling ashamed of them. Thomas Carlyle highlights that understanding our errors is a crucial form of self-education, suggesting that learning from our shortcomings helps us develop wisdom and improve ourselves.
Themes
MistakesLearningSelf-EducationWisdomGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing challenges.
More from Thomas Carlyle
All quotes →Thirty 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
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