Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether. - Thomas Carlyle

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.

For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneeringly flung away.

(Quoted by Thomas Carlyle) The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect.