The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day?
Interpretation
The quote expresses a yearning for knowledge about the constellations and a desire for connection with the universe.
In this quote, Thomas Carlyle reflects on a missed opportunity for education regarding the constellations. He laments not having been taught about the stars above, suggesting a deeper longing for understanding and connection with the natural world, which he feels remains elusive despite its constant presence.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote to inspire students to learn about astronomy.
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.
When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.
No prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the original.
Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it - they're busy dealing with it.
I go to the Himalayas after every film. I go alone. I go to the interiors, to the villages. Being there itself is like meditation.
If you manage to stop the timber industry from cutting this forest, they'll cut that forest. If you stop oil drilling here, they'll go drill there.
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