Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way by natural dimness and selfishness; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis-able.
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Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.
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"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith."
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He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.
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Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.
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Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
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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 great soul of this world is just.
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Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.
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The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
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Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.
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A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.
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A dandy is a clothes-wearing man--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object--the wearing of clothes, wisely and well; so that, as others dress to live, he lives to dress.
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Lies exist only to be extinguished.
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The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
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Leaders: Captains of industry.
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Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
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Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.
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When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
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Wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.
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No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
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I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.