Saturday, August 24, 2024
Tragical
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), "Shooting Niagra: And After?" Essays on Politics and Society (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), pp. 265-299 (at 293):
Newer› ‹Older
Tragical to think of: Every new generation is born to us direct out of Heaven; white as purest writing paper, white as snow;—everything we please can be written on it;—and our pleasure and our negligence is, To begin blotching it, scrawling, smutching and smearing it, from the first day it sees the sun: towards such a consummation of ugliness, dirt, and blackness of darkness, as is too often visible. Woe on us; there is no woe like this,—if we were not sunk in stupefaction, and had still eyes to discern or souls to feel it!
