Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?
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Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.
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Biography is the only true history.
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When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.
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The greatest mistake is to imagine that we never err.
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The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?
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Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break; too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that "would," in this world of ours, is a mere zero to "should," and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to "shall.
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If I had my way, the world would hear a pretty stern command - Exit Christ.
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The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.
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For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.
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Evil and good are everywhere, like shadow and substance; inseparable (for men) yet not hostile, only opposed.
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Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
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Rare benevolence, the minister of God.
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Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.
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Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.
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Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us?
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A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet.
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Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.
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High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge.
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History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.
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Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.
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Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
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Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.
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All that a university or final highest school. can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books.