On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
Thomas Carlyleamazon.com
On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul
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Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body.
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
What the prophets were to morality, so too were the poets to beauty.
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him.
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. Valour is still value. The first duty for a man
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He proves it by etymology. The word Wuotan, which is the original form of Odin, a word spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin vadere, with the English wade and such like,—means primarily Movement, Source of Movement, Power; and is the fi
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What defined this group of premodern heroes was their ability to awaken heroic instincts in others, and to channel these toward the comprehension and the realization of order, hierarchy, harmony, beauty, and justice.
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation,—till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently?