Thomas Carlyle Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Thomas Carlyle.
Famous Quotes By Thomas Carlyle
The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him. — Thomas Carlyle
Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope. — Thomas Carlyle
Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself. — Thomas Carlyle
Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown ... Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men. — Thomas Carlyle
What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine. — Thomas Carlyle
Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being. — Thomas Carlyle
What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that! — Thomas Carlyle
Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid. — Thomas Carlyle
He that has a secret to hide should not only hide it but hide that he has to hide it. — Thomas Carlyle
The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity. — Thomas Carlyle
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite. — Thomas Carlyle
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. — Thomas Carlyle
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO. — Thomas Carlyle
Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair. — Thomas Carlyle
Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men ...
(The Everlasting No) — Thomas Carlyle
Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. — Thomas Carlyle
We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing wildly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. — Thomas Carlyle
Superstition! that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, with all its racks, and poison chalices, and foul sleeping draughts, is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there and will reappear. — Thomas Carlyle
All human souls, never so bedarkened, love light; light once kindled spreads till all is luminous. — Thomas Carlyle
There are impertinent inquiries made; your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on the matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was! — Thomas Carlyle
Every poet ... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal. — Thomas Carlyle
If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music. — Thomas Carlyle
Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. — Thomas Carlyle
This London City, with all of its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic an tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One-a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. — Thomas Carlyle
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die. — Thomas Carlyle
All great peoples are conservative. — Thomas Carlyle
Rare benevolence, the minister of God. — Thomas Carlyle
The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin. — Thomas Carlyle
Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth. — Thomas Carlyle
There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. — Thomas Carlyle
We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall
which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people. — Thomas Carlyle
Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see! — Thomas Carlyle
Macaulay is well for awhile, but one wouldn't live under Niagara. — Thomas Carlyle
Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules. — Thomas Carlyle
Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,
a real, not an imaginary,
and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. — Thomas Carlyle
France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams. — Thomas Carlyle
Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day? — Thomas Carlyle
Nothing ever happens but once in all this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning. — Thomas Carlyle
There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done. — Thomas Carlyle
Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off
and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours. — Thomas Carlyle
The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing." — Thomas Carlyle
I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,
what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it. — Thomas Carlyle
The whole past is the procession of the present. — Thomas Carlyle
Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, — Thomas Carlyle
Out of Eternity the new day is born; Into Eternity at night will return. — Thomas Carlyle
Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone. — Thomas Carlyle
We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness. — Thomas Carlyle
Lies exist only to be extinguished. — Thomas Carlyle
There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed. — Thomas Carlyle
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. — Thomas Carlyle
Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. — Thomas Carlyle
This is the end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne. Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have a life as despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine, - which he kindled! Let us pity the hapless Lomenie; and forgive him; and, as soon as possible, forget him. — Thomas Carlyle
By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears. — Thomas Carlyle
The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die. — Thomas Carlyle
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done. — Thomas Carlyle
The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only. — Thomas Carlyle
What I loved in the man was his health, his unity with himself; all people and all things seemed to find their quite peaceable adjustment with him, not a proud domineering one, as after doubtful contest, but a spontaneous-looking peaceable, even humble one. — Thomas Carlyle
What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials? — Thomas Carlyle
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt. — Thomas Carlyle
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against. — Thomas Carlyle
Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom. — Thomas Carlyle
The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,
words with little meaning, actions with little worth,
one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. — Thomas Carlyle
Man is a tool using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. — Thomas Carlyle
The purpose of man is in action not thought. — Thomas Carlyle
The great soul of this world is just. — Thomas Carlyle
The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement. — Thomas Carlyle
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else. — Thomas Carlyle
Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do. — Thomas Carlyle
Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile. — Thomas Carlyle
The universe is but one vast Symbol of God. — Thomas Carlyle
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew. — Thomas Carlyle
A fair day's wages for a fair day's work. — Thomas Carlyle
Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. — Thomas Carlyle
A thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such an one announces himself, I doubt not there runs a shudder through the nether empire; and new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap and hoodwink and handcuff him. — Thomas Carlyle
A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet. — Thomas Carlyle
The person who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye. — Thomas Carlyle
Debt is a bottomless sea. — Thomas Carlyle
The first purpose of clothes ... was not warmth or decency, but ornament ... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. — Thomas Carlyle
Work alone is noble. — Thomas Carlyle
Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. — Thomas Carlyle
The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself. — Thomas Carlyle
The past is always attractive because it is drained of fear. — Thomas Carlyle
Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you. — Thomas Carlyle
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green. — Thomas Carlyle
The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature's own heart - all else is wind in comparison. — Thomas Carlyle
He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that. — Thomas Carlyle
The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice. — Thomas Carlyle
There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul! — Thomas Carlyle