52 quotes
A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the inarticulate deeps.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke'; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming!
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
They are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
[B]y awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Europe has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)