Thomas Carlyle Quotes
-
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.
-
You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist - all he must learn are the two words "supply" and "demand."
-
Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.
-
The mathematics of high achievement.
-
Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.
-
The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.
-
Lord Bacon could as easily have created the planets as he could have written Hamlet.
-
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
-
Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?
-
How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the good and true; otherwise impossible, except as armed neutrality or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.
-
Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.
-
The greatest of all heroes is One--whom we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on earth.
-
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.
-
Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther.
-
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
-
The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
-
A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.
-
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.
-
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one.
-
What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that!
-
Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles.
-
All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand work, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.
-
There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.
-
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.