Frasi di Thomas Carlyle

pagina 15

“Tra gli uomini c'è una naturale aristocrazia, i cui fondamenti sono la virtù e il talento.”

“Il blocco di granito che era un ostacolo sul cammino dei deboli agevola il cammino dei forti.”

“Il nostro compito principale non consiste nel vedere vagamente in lontananza, ma nel fare ciò che abbiamo chiaramente a portata di mano.”

“Il sarcasmo è il linguaggio del diavolo: per questo da molto tempo vi ho praticamente rinunciato.”

“Un uomo che abbia almeno una volta riso di gusto non può essere, tutto sommato, irrimediabilmente malvagio.”

“Gli abiti hanno fatto di noi degli uomini, c'è ora il serio pericolo che facciano di noi degli attaccapanni.”

“Gli uomini fanno meno di ciò che dovrebbero se non fanno tutto ciò che possono.”

“Nessun grand'uomo vive invano: la storia del mondo non è che la biografia degli uomini grandi.”

“Il regale Mirabeau […] un uomo, una realtà.”

“Non è difficile capire la profonda incompatibilità reciproca che divide i due [Robespierre e Danton]; con qual terrore di odio femmineo la povera Formula verdemare guarda la straordinaria, colossale Realtà, e diventa più verde nell'osservarla […] Due prodotti di tali dimensioni sono troppo per una sola rivoluzione.”

“[Georges Jacques Danton] Pur con tante scorie, era un uomo, un'ardente realtà del grande grembo di fuoco della natura stessa.”

“[Maximilien de Robespierre], Arido, implacabile e impotente, monotono e affettato, infecondo come il vento di Harmattan.”

“Felice colui che ha trovato il suo lavoro; non chieda altra felicità.”

“Il cozzo di tutto il sistema solare e di tutti i sistemi stellari ti potrebbe uccidere una volta sola.”

“Il mio regno non è quel che ho, ma quel che faccio.”

“Quando si abbatte una quercia, la sua caduta echeggia in tutta la foresta, ma cento ghiande possono essere seminate in silenzio da un venticello che nessuno nota.”

“Un uomo che vuol lavorare e non trova lavoro è forse lo spettacolo più triste che l'ineguaglianza della fortuna possa offrire sulla terra.”

“A una pioggia d'oro molte cose sono penetrabili.”

“Direi che il maggior difetto è non esserne consci di alcuno.”

“È meglio sopprimere del tutto i discorsi che non conducono ad alcun tipo d'azione.”

“Felici i popoli i cui annali sono vuoti nei libri di storia!”

“Il lavoro è la cura suprema di tutte le miserie e i mali che hanno mai afflitto l'umanità.”

“Il merito dell'originalità non è la novità, bensì la sincerità.”

“Il mondo è una repubblica di mediocri, e sempre sarà così.”

“Il sentimentalista è il più arido tra tutti i mortali.”

“Inghilterra: trenta milioni, in maggioranza cretini.”

“L'opinione popolare è la più grossa bugia che esista.”

“La Francia fu per lungo tempo un dispotismo temperato dagli epigrammi.”

“La vera università di questi giorni è una collezione di libri.”

“Non ho mai sentito che un uomo intelligente sia mai nato da una famiglia completamente stupida.”

“Ogni lavoro, anche filare il cotone, è nobile; il lavoro è l'unica cosa nobile.”

“Per ogni uomo che resiste alla prosperità, ce ne sono cento che resistono alle avversità.”

“Un uomo non può fare bene un paio di scarpe a meno che non lo faccia devotamente.”

“Una vita ben scritta è quasi tanto rara quanto una ben spesa.”

“No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.”

“So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.”

“The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the inarticulate deeps.”

“Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.”

“by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers.”

“The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past.”

“It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.”

“flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectioneries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after solid nutritive food?”

“A whiff of grapeshot.”

“The unspeakable Turk”

“Captains of Industry.”

“While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey,—I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered.”

“But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of vivid, impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to give itself sensible utterance,—I find that, in this case, the field it has in England is narrow to an extreme; is perhaps narrower than ever offered itself, for the like object, in this world before. Parliament, Church, Law: let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career, he finds among variable conditions one condition invariable, and extremely surprising, That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue. For heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no account kept.”

“Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human education; that the human creature needs first of all to be educated not that he may speak, but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say! If speech is the bank-note of an inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honored. But if there is no inward capital; if speech represent no real culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, but the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas, said bank-note is then a forged one; passing freely current in the market; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all the world, which are in sad truth infallible, and of amount incalculable.”

“You made the born noble yours, welcoming him as what he was, the Sent of Heaven: you did not force him either to die or become your enemy; idly neglecting or suppressing him as what he was not, a thing of no worth. You accepted the blessed light; and in the shape of infernal lightning it needed not to visit you. How, like an immense mine-shaft through the dim oppressed strata of society, this Institution of the Priesthood ran; opening, from the lowest depths towards all heights and towards Heaven itself, a free road of egress and emergence towards virtuous nobleness, heroism and well-doing, for every born man.”

“This is not quite counted by seasons, therefore the Newspapers are silent: but by generations and centuries, I assure you it becomes amazingly sensible; and surpasses, as Heaven does Earth, all the corn and wine, and whale-oil and California bullion, or any other crop you grow.”

“This is a reflection sad but important to the modern Governments now fallen anarchic, That they had not spiritual talent enough. And if this is so, then surely the question, How these Governments came to sink for want of intellect? is a rather interesting one. Intellect, in some measure, is born into every Century; and the Nineteenth flatters itself that it is rather distinguished that way!”

“By what method or methods can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as diamond-grains from the general mass of sand: the able men, not the sham-able;—and set to do the work of governing, contriving, administering and guiding for us!”

“England, and the Eternal Voices, summon them; poor England never so needed them as now. Up, be doing everywhere: the hour of crisis has verily come! In all sections of English life, the god-made king is needed; is pressingly demanded in most; in some, cannot longer, without peril as of conflagration, be dispensed with.”

“My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None: the American cousins have yet done none of these things.”

“Insurrections!—The world, with its Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and such like, has of late days been terribly inattentive to that question of work and wages. We will not say, the poor world has retrograded even here: we will say rather, the world has been rushing on with such fiery animation to get work and ever more work done, it has had no time to think of dividing the wages; and has merely left them to be scrambled for by the Law of the Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of Laissez-faire, and other idle Laws and Un-laws.”

“It is, O friends, that all of us, that many of us, should acquire the true eye for talent, which is dreadfully wanting at present! The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it,—O Heavens, presupposes so many things!”

“He has a mild grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity: but there is a terrible flash of anger in him too.”

“Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious feeling, without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and what others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an honest pity to encourage the humblest. Withal there is a noble reticence in this Lord Abbot: much vain unreason he hears; lays up without response. He is not there to expect reason and nobleness of others; he is there to give them of his own reason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as we said, who can suffer from them, and for them; bear the burden their poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under; and in virtue thereof govern them, lead them out of weakness into strength, out of defeat into victory!”

“Life was never a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore, and the heart sore.”

“Nay interference has begun: there are already Factory Inspectors,—who seem to have no lack of work. Perhaps there might be Mine-Inspectors too:—might there not be Furrowfield Inspectors withal, and ascertain for us how on seven and sixpence a week a human family does live! Interference has begun; it must continue, must extensively enlarge itself, deepen and sharpen itself. Such things cannot longer be idly lapped in darkness, and suffered to go on unseen: the Heavens do see them; the curse, not the blessing of the Heavens is on an Earth that refuses to see them.”

“Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies; politicized, as few could.”

“A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity;—like the old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god!”

“For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us!”