Carlyle, Thomas -- Lecture (1840-05-05), “The Hero as Divinity,” Home House, Portman Square, London

Dave — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 22:27:50 +0000

Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the Pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did believe it, — merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of the name of sane, to believe it! It will be often our duty to protest against this sort of hypothesis about men’s doings and history; and I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die!

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-05), “The Hero as Divinity,” Home House, Portman Square, London
(Source)

The lecture notes were collected by Carlyle into On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, Lecture 1, (1841).

Parker, Dorothy -- “The Flaw in Paganism,” Death and Taxes (1931)

Dave — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 22:04:51 +0000

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer, poet, wit
“The Flaw in Paganism,” Death and Taxes (1931)
(Source)

WIST Quotations

Carlyle, Thomas -- Lecture (1840-05-05), “The Hero as Divinity,” Home House, Portman Square, London

Parker, Dorothy -- “The Flaw in Paganism,” Death and Taxes (1931)