Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.
Thomas CarlyleTrue humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Thomas CarlyleSarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
Thomas CarlyleSocial Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science
Thomas Carlyle