“Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials,—O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue!”

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

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Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

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