“ No people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. ”
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1841). copy citation
| Author | Thomas Carlyle |
|---|---|
| Source | On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History |
| Topic | |
| Date | 1841 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1091-h/1091-h.htm |
Context
“Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, then we may find here in Voltaireism one of the lowest! He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people ever were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. Persiflage was the character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney comes up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;—in short that he too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man.”
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