10 quotes
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Signs of the Times (1829)
With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering.
Signs of the Times (1829)
The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Wonder, indeed, is, on all hands, dying out: it is the sign of uncultivation to wonder.
Signs of the Times (1829)
No solitary miscreant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would venture on such actions and imaginations, as large communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, entertained as sound wisdom.
Signs of the Times (1829)
It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the noble People that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Our “Theories of Taste,” as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is “explained,” made mechanically visible, from “Association” and the like, ...
Signs of the Times (1829)
Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things. We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.
Signs of the Times (1829)