Bk. II, ch. 5
The words Carlyle put in italics are a quotation from Book 1 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)
Context: Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.
“it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.”
“The smallest of actions is always better than the noblest of intentions.”
II. Actio Læsa; The strength, and the functions of the senses, and other faculties change and fail.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
“Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.”
Henri Bergson, as quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442; this only seems to have become attributed to Sallust in the early 21st century.
Misattributed
“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”
This is derived from Alexander Pope's "An honest man's the noblest work of God." Motto of the essay "The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).
Volume 2, Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)
“I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.”
Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action.
Speech at the Descartes Conference http://books.google.com/books?id=BynXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Je+dirais+qu'il+faut+agir+en+homme+de+pens%C3%A9e+et+penser+en+homme+d'action%22&pg=PA1579#v=onepage in Paris (1937)
Quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442, as "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
“He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.”
The Hermit
2008-05-17 http://ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2008/05/17/114573.html
2008
