There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul! - Thomas Carlyle

I began gradually to perceive this immense fact, which I really advise every one of you who read history to look out for and read for—if he has not found it—it was that the kings of England all the way from the Norman Conquest down to the times of Charles I. had appointed, so far as they knew, those who deserved to be appointed, peers. They were all Royal men, with minds full of justice and valour and humanity, and all kinds of qualities that are good for men to have who ought to rule over others. Then their genealogy was remarkable—and there is a great deal more in genealogies than is generally believed at present. I never heard tell of any clever man that came out of entirely stupid people. If you look around the families of your acquaintance, you will see such cases in all directions. I know that it has been the case in mine. I can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and the family stamp is quite distinctly legible upon each of them, so that it goes for a great deal—the hereditary principle in Government as in other things; and it must be recognised so soon as there is any fixity in things.

Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what never-imagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; down almost to total extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind!

Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me, Which way we meant to vote?—were it not our likeliest answer: Neither way! I, as a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe; but also I will not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make laws for this country. I will have no hand in such a mission. How dare I! If other men cannot be got in England, a totally other sort of men, different as light is from dark, as star-fire is from street-mud, what is the use of votings, or of Parliaments in England?