The Modern British Essayists: Carlyle, Thomas. Critical and miscellaneous essays

Front Cover
A. Hart, 1852
 

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 331 - Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation. My Lord, your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
Page 101 - Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the .¿Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident; or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities: a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.
Page 108 - There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.
Page 105 - A wish (I mind its power), A wish, that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast, — That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least.
Page 12 - True humour springs not more from the head than from the heart ; it is not contempt, its essence is love ; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Page 32 - The cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men ; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe...
Page 25 - Let some beneficent divinity snatch him, when a suckling, from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time, that he may ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century ; not, however, to delight it by his presence, but dreadful, like the Son of Agamemnon, to purify it.
Page 106 - Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with necessity ; begins even when we have surrendered to necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to necessity, and thus in reality triumphed over it, and felt that in necessity we are free.
Page 130 - Nemesis visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation...
Page 108 - I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these recollections of forty years since.

Bibliographic information