Thomas Carlyle Quotes on Man (71 Quotes)

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

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.

A terrible, beetle-browed, mastiff-mouthed, yellow-skinned, broad-bottomed, grim-taciturn individual with a pair of dull-cruel-looking black eyes, and as much Parliamentary intellect and silent-rage in him. . . as I have ever seen in any man.

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.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

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

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

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

The purpose of man is in action not thought.

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.

Of all Gods creatures, Man alone is poor.

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.

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.

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.

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

I have seen gleams in the face and eyes of the man that have let you look into a higher country.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter.

Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will daily grow more and more right. It is at the bottom of the condition on which all men have to cultivate themselves.

It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that, as through life and to death he firmly did.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Skepticism, 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 believe i

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

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

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.

The king is the man who can.

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.

Of all paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path for every man to find this path, and to walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

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. . .

There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works in idleness alone there is perpetual despair.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Lives there the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords.

Man is a tool-using animal.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another nor could it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

Give us, O give us the man who sings at his work Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time ... he will do it better ... he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible to fatigue while he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres.

Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature.

It is the first of all problems for a man (or woman) to find out what kind of work he (or she) is to do in this universe.