Thomas Carlyle quotes - page 21

In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. (Thomas Carlyle)
If a soul is born with divine intelligence, and has its lips touched with hallowed fire, in consecration for high enterprises under the sun, this young soul will find the question asked of him by England every hour and moment: "Canst thou turn thy human intelligence into the beaver sort, and make honest contrivance, and accumulation of capital by it? If so, do it; and avoid the vulpine kind, which I don't recommend. Honest triumphs in engineering and machinery await thee; scrip awaits thee, commercial successes, kingship in the counting-room, on the stock-exchange;-thou shalt be the envy of surrounding flunkies, and collect into a heap more gold than a dray-horse can draw. "-"Gold, so much gold?" View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men,-the chief recognized virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
First get your man; all is got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them like a man. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
In anger he had no need of oaths, his words were like sharp arrows that smote into the very heart. The fault was that he exaggerated (which tendency I also inherit), yet only in description and for the sake chiefly of humorous effect. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Your born genius, therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or cannot? True, all human talent, especially all deep talent, is a talent to do, and is intrinsically of silent nature; inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which it is an incarnated fraction. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
They are very noble men, these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has. (Thomas Carlyle)
Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
On this ground, if not on all manner of other grounds, it may be truly said, the "Organization of Labor" (not organizable by the mad methods tried hitherto) is the universal vital Problem of the world. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
In several respects, I consider my father as one of the most interesting men I have known. He was a man of perhaps the very largest natural endowment of any it has been my lot to converse with. None of us will ever forget that bold glowing style of his, flowing free from his untutored soul, full of metaphors (though he knew not what a metaphor was) with, all manner of potent words which he appropriated and applied with a surprising accuracy you often would not guess whence; brief, energetic, and which I should say conveyed the most perfect picture - definite, clear, not in ambitious colors, but in full white sunliglit - of all the dialects I have ever listened to. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,-a business often of enormous difficulty. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be "happy"? View quote
Thomas Carlyle
The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
They all learned to he masons from him, or from one another; instead of miscellaneous laborers and hunters, became regular tradesmen, the best in all their district, the skilfullest and faithfullest, and the best-rewarded every way. Except my father, none of them attained a decisive religiousness. But they all had prudence and earnestness, love of truth, industry, and the blessings it brings. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
He that is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained. (Thomas Carlyle)
We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know what he is, or how to account of him and receive him! View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Such grinning inanity is very sad to the soul of man. Human faces should not grin on one like masks; they should look on one like faces! I love honest laughter, as I do sunlight; but not dishonest. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the Immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep. View quote
Thomas Carlyle