The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing.
 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1841). copy citation

Context

“all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was there also as well as here.—Hah! These men, I think, had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews; it has firearms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm;” source