Thomas Carlyle Quotes (394 Quotes)

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

Heroism - the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.

The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.

Every noble work is at first impossible. quoted by Og Mandino.

Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

The king is the man who can.

In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.

I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

A mans perfection is his work.

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights.

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

The first of all gospels is, that no lie lives forever.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

The Persians are called the French of the East we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

Rest is for the dead.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

That a parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only

Fame, we may understand is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such it is an accident, not a property of a man.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

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

The actual well seen is ideal.

The foul sluggard's comfort It will last my time'.

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.

No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand work, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.

The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper

So here hath been dawning another blue day Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away Out of eternity this new day is born Into eternity at night 'twill return.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.

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

Little other than a redtape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

No man sees far, most see no farther than their noses.

Genius . . . means transcendent capacity of taking trouble.