Frasi di Thomas Carlyle

pagina 16

“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.”

“A boy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly.”

“World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that.”

“One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities: what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous worshippers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,—recognized them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong.”

“But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an emblem.”

“The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,—of understanding him to be always the eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods for!”

“Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that way. His nature was without Humor; and he had too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren mockery, which, in the hundred cases are all that we find passing current as Humor, discover themselves in Schiller. His works are full of labored earnestness; he is the gravest of all writers.”

“Religion was the pole-star for my father. Rude and uncultivated as he otherwise was, it made him and kept him "in all points a man."”

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared."”

“The Church, poor old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that: the noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self,—really to human nobleness in many most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is there some human nobleness in you, or is there not?"”

“there is a great free human heart in this man. The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints.”

“Love not Pleasure; love God.”

“Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity for human calamity is very beautiful; but the deep oblivion of the Law of Right and Wrong; this "indiscriminate mashing up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle" of the Philanthropic movement, is by no means beautiful; this, on the contrary, is altogether ugly and alarming.”

“Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.”

“They are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest, truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had "Poetic contests" among them before the time of Mahomet.”

“On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God Wish, the god of all rude men, — this has been enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily believed.”

“In fact, the spiritual detriment we unconsciously suffer, in every province of our affairs, from this our prostrate respect to power of speech is incalculable.”

“They fled precipitately, some of them with what we may call an exquisite ignominy,—in terror of the treadmill or worse.”

“The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. Not a Hero only is needed, but a world fit for him;”

“Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.”

“Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.”

“This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”

“Silence is deep as Eternity, Speech is shallow as Time.”

“Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.”

“By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.”

“Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

“I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest."”

“Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him.”

“Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as "detect?”

“America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it.”