Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes.
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Woe to him, . . . who has no court of appeal against the world's judgment.
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Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.
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That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,-for we have no word to speak about it.
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Man is, and was always, a block-head and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider.
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The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.
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A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever.
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The dead are all holy, even they that were base and wicked while alive. Their baseness and wickedness was not they, was but the heavy and unmanageable environment that lay round them.
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If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
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Variety is the condition of harmony.
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Lies exist only to be extinguished.
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We arc the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God.
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With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl around, and simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, offhand, become air, and non-extant--the little spitfires!
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Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.
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Force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?" As used in his time, by the word force, Carlyle means energy.
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I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.
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We observe with confidence that the truly strong mind, view it as intellect or morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here the sign of health is unconsciousness.
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Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
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O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.
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For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
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Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.
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Is not every meanest day the confluence of two eternities?
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It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
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If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of.