Thomas Carlyle Quotes on Life (23 Quotes)


    Life is a little gleam of time between two eternity s.

    The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder -- waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.

    When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

    The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

    Having a purpose in life, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.


    There they are cutting each other's throats, because one half of them prefer hiring their servants for life, and the other by the hour.

    Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war it's a mutual hostility.

    That monstrous tuberosity of civilised life, the capital of England.

    The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception.

    All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three Fates - the Past, Present and Future watering its roots from the Sacred Well. It's 'bough,' with their buddings and disleafings, - events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, - stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old.... I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful altogether beautiful and great.

    Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

    The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life.

    The fraction of life can be increased in value not so much By increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceives me, unity itself divided by zero will give infinity.

    Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

    A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

    Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

    We call it a Society and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named 'fair competition' and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.

    Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

    To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious Why, if there is no Devil nay, unless the Devil is your God.

    The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.


    That monstrous tuberosity of civilized life, the capital of England.

    The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.


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