Thomas Carlyle quotes - page 29

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish historian, philosopher, and essayist, renowned for his influential works on culture and society. His writings inspired debates on leadership, history, and the power of individuals. He became a leading figure in Victorian intellectual life and shaped the literary and philosophical discourse of his time. Here are 732 of his quotes:

The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won't in the end affirm or deny anything.

Thomas Carlyle

A person usually has two reasons for doing something a good reason and the real reason.

Thomas Carlyle

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat... Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

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

Thomas Carlyle

Poetry we will call Musical Thought.

Thomas Carlyle

Quackery gives birth to nothing gives death to all things.

Thomas Carlyle

Macaulay is well for a while, but one wouldn't live under Niagara.

Thomas Carlyle

It is great, and there is no other greatnessto make one nook of Gods Creation more fruitful, better, more worthy of God to make some human heart a little wiser, manlier, happiermore blessed.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

Today is not yesterday we ourselves change how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same Change, indeed is painful yet ever needful and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.

Thomas Carlyle

The archenemy is the arch stupid.

Thomas Carlyle

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.

Thomas Carlyle

Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments, Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.

Thomas Carlyle

Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own.

Thomas Carlyle

O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!

Thomas Carlyle

For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion."

Thomas Carlyle

We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, - the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, - has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world?

Thomas Carlyle

It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. 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!

Thomas Carlyle