Thomas Carlyle quotes - page 29

One seems to believe almost all that they believe and when they stop short and call it a Religion, and you pass on, and call it only a reminiscence of one, should you not part with the kiss of peace. (Thomas Carlyle)
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. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
A person usually has two reasons for doing something a good reason and the real reason. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Little other than a redtape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Poetry we will call Musical Thought. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect. (Thomas Carlyle)
Quackery gives birth to nothing gives death to all things. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Macaulay is well for a while, but one wouldn't live under Niagara. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
The archenemy is the arch stupid. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
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. (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! View quote
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." View quote
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? View quote
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! View quote
Thomas Carlyle