Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to… - Thomas Carlyle

The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. Nobody, or hardly anybody, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind; a Human Doer especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate of all Nature's Facts? Nobody can recognize him: till once he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has been articulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To the worshipper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct from Heaven,—how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfortunate? Not except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent,—which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no great haste to do.

"Of all the acts of man, repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults . . . is to be conscious of none." (Thomas Carlyle)

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!