The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
Interpretation
Engaging with people who only agree with us is ultimately unfulfilling and lacks depth.
This quote by Thomas Carlyle highlights the importance of dialogue and the value of differing perspectives. While it may be pleasant to converse with those who share our views, it lacks substance and growth; meaningful conversations arise from differing opinions and challenging perspectives.
In practice
In a team meeting, to emphasize the value of diverse opinions, one might reference this quote.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thirty millions, mostly fools.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Hands make the world each day.
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
The good of our soul is more important than that of our body; and we have to prefer the spiritual welfare of our neighbor to our bodily comforts. . . If a certain kind of dress constitutes a grave and proximate occasion of sin, and endangers the salvation of your soul and others, it is your duty to give it up.
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