27 quotes
Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
Past and Present (1843)
All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.
Past and Present (1843)
He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.
Past and Present (1843)
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Past and Present (1843)
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
Past and Present (1843)
Fire is the best of servents; but what a master!
Past and Present (1843)
"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
Past and Present (1843)
The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.
Past and Present (1843)
To this man life is already as earnest and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death.
Past and Present (1843)
Unless some Hero-worship, in its new appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very habitable long.
Past and Present (1843)
Genius is 'the inspired gift of God.' It is the clearer presence of God Most High in a man. Dim, potential in all men; in this man it has become clear, actual.
Past and Present (1843)
In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.
Past and Present (1843)
You are no sister of ours; what shadow of proof is there? Here are our parchments, our padlocks, proving indisputably our money-safes to be ours, and you to have no business with them. Depart!
Past and Present (1843)
It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.
Past and Present (1843)
In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie.
Past and Present (1843)
The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here.
Past and Present (1843)
Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-sergeant eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigable learned mouth, cannot make unjust just.
Past and Present (1843)
All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the Immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep.
Past and Present (1843)
The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!
Past and Present (1843)
Have true reverence, and what indeed is inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill, and there is nothing.
Past and Present (1843)