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Thomas Hughes

Thomas Hughes was an English lawyer and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser-known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861).


“He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world;”
Thomas Hughes
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“Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have again.”
Thomas Hughes
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“A character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered”
Thomas Hughes
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“We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another.”
Thomas Hughes
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“Boyishness—by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker.”
Thomas Hughes
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“The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.”
Thomas Hughes
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“At that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes.”
Thomas Hughes
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“Don't be led away to think this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner.”
Thomas Hughes
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“Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for yourself—you are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just look about you in the place you find yourself in, and try to make things a little better and honester there.”
Thomas Hughes
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“I want to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy, or turned his back on a big one.”
Thomas Hughes
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“The astonishment soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once and for ever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself, became his friends and counsellors.”
Thomas Hughes
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“...so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for....”
Thomas Hughes
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“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends,for it is one of God's best gifts.”
Thomas Hughes
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“Berbahagialah orang yang berbakat menjalin persahabatan, karena hal itu merupakan salah satu karunia Tuhan yang terbaik.Menjalin persahabatan meliputi banyak kemampuan, terutama untuk tidak mementingkan diri sendiri dan untuk menghargai keluhuran jiwa serta daya tarik orang lain.”
Thomas Hughes
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