Sublime
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‘That means mischief, eh?’ said Mr Hawley. ‘He’s got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.
George Eliot • Middlemarch
But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-givin
... See moreGeorge Eliot • Middlemarch (AmazonClassics Edition)
Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: "A man's life is what his thoughts make of it."
Earl Nightingale • How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Walker Percy • A Confederacy of Dunces
Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.
John Stuart Mill • On Liberty
The Duke means Dux, Leader; King is Kön-ning, Kan-ning, Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not insupportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes;—reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not insupportably inaccurate, I say!
Thomas Carlyle • On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (Rethinking the Western Tradition)
Hegel fut probablement celui qui en fait le mieux la théorie : le grand homme est celui que l’histoire fait pour qu’il la fasse… Ruse de la raison, il est un produit de l’histoire qui s’arrange pour créer la main qui créera… la main de l’histoire. Le grand homme fait l’histoire qui fait le grand homme.
Michel Onfray • Vivre une vie philosophique (French Edition)
Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.
Arthur Schopenhauer • Works of Arthur Schopenhauer
He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.