Quote #20

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

More from Thomas Carlyle

  1. A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
  2. : with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering :
  3. In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
  4. Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!
  5. Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood.
  6. Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.
  7. The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.
  8. The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in?

All Thomas Carlyle quotes