Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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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?
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Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.
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Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
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A very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.
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It is not a lucky word, this name impossible; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
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O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this for a truth: the thing thou seekest is already here, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see.
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Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.
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True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
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Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.
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A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.
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Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.
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The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.
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Time has only a relative existence.
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I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.
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The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far-distant, long-forgotten home.
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Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.
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Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances?
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Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
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All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone noble.
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Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.
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The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
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To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.
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It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.
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Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.