Quotation added by staff

Why not add this quote to your bookmarks?

  ...under new conditions, is the history of every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscure shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this man Odin? The gigantic image of _his_ natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded and confused in that manner! Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.  
To me there is something very touching in this primeval figure of Heroism; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man himself. If I could show in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of man's history here in our world,--it would be the chief use of this discoursing at...   Carlyle, Thomas

Excerpt from On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History · This quote is about history and historians · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

• Biography
• 5 Fans
• This quote in blogs