“For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us!”

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave…" by Thomas Carlyle?
Thomas Carlyle photo
Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

Related quotes

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“One time in a hundred a gun might save your life; the other ninety-nine it will just tempt you into folly.”

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 43)

Mary McCarthy photo
Henry James photo
Muhammad photo
Fernando Sabino photo
Pat Robertson photo
Yagyū Munenori photo
Pat Robertson photo

“If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions

Muhammad photo

Related topics