Quote #32
The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.
Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.
More from Thomas Carlyle
- All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.
- It can be said of him [Scott], when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together i…
- Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.
- Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
- No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.
- There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.
- Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
- The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.