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In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.
Thomas Carlyle -
I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
Thomas Carlyle
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Coining "Dismal Science" as a nickname for Political Economy.
Thomas Carlyle -
Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh.
Thomas Carlyle -
Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.
Thomas Carlyle -
Self-contemplation is infallibly the symptom of disease.
Thomas Carlyle -
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
Thomas Carlyle -
What this country needs is a man who knows God other than by heresay.
Thomas Carlyle
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When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!
Thomas Carlyle -
Experience is the best of school masters, only the school fees are heavy.
Thomas Carlyle -
A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.
Thomas Carlyle -
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.
Thomas Carlyle -
Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.
Thomas Carlyle -
The errors of a wise man are literally more instructive than the truths of a fool. The wise man travels in lofty, far-seeing regions; the fool in low-lying, high-fenced lanes; retracing the footsteps of the former, to discover where he diviated, whole provinces of the universe are laid open to us; in the path of the latter, granting even that he has not deviated at all, little is laid open to us but two wheel-ruts and two hedges.
Thomas Carlyle
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Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any.
Thomas Carlyle -
Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science.
Thomas Carlyle -
A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.
Thomas Carlyle -
Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation.
Thomas Carlyle -
The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.
Thomas Carlyle -
Whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,to the length of sixpence.
Thomas Carlyle
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Is there no God, then, but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe?
Thomas Carlyle -
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
Thomas Carlyle -
The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself.
Thomas Carlyle -
Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.
Thomas Carlyle