“ Men cannot live isolated: we are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can disunite himself from any lowest. ”
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843). copy citation
| Author | Thomas Carlyle |
|---|---|
| Source | Past and Present |
| Topic | misery body |
| Date | 1843 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13534/pg13534-images.html |
Context
“That any man should or can keep himself apart from men, have 'no business' with them, except a cash-account business!' It is the silliest tale a distressed generation of men ever took to telling one another. Men cannot live isolated: we are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can disunite himself from any lowest. Consider it. Your poor 'Werter blowing out his distracted existence because Charlotte will not have the keeping thereof:' this is no peculiar phasis; it is simply the highest expression of a phasis traceable wherever one human creature meets another!”
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