"Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement."
"How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more."
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Source: Jane Welsh Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle (1903). “New Letters and Memorials”
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"The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it."
"Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has ''cast up'' in my time or is like to -- this art by which even the ''poor'' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?"
"In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me."
"On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best."
"Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity."