Thomas Carlyle Quotes (394 Quotes)

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

It were better to perish than to continue schoolmastering.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

By nature man hates change seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

The purpose of man is in action not thought.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.

Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only it is moral also a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to bel.

Painful for a person is rebellious independence, only in loving companionship with his associates does a person feel safe Only in reverently bowing down before the higher does a person feel exalted.

Of all Gods creatures, Man alone is poor.

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

Endurance is patience concentrated.

No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.

Let him who wants to move and convince others be first moved and convinced himself.

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

The whole past is the procession of the present.

What is aristocracy A corporation of the best, of the bravest.

Time has only a relative existence.

There are but two ways of paying debt Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

The great law of culture - and surely this convention before us now is a great law of culture - is let each person become all that he was created equal of being. That is what this convention will help to achieve.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

There is no act more moral between men than that of rule And obedience.

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.

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.

Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

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.

All poetry is but a giving of names.

Of all the acts of man, repentance is the most divine.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The past is all holy to us the dead are all holy even they that were wicked when alive.

If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... 'Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.'

Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.

All great peoples are conservative.