Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.
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These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.
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To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity.
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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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Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
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A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.
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The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?
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If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
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Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?
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The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.
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The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it.
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The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows. The greatest of faults, I should say is to be conscious of none.
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Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
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By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
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For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?
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All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
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Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.
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There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed.
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The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
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To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nusiance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissable manner made away with, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith.
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Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
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They only are wise who know that they know nothing.
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The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.
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O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.