Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Coining "Dismal Science" as a nickname for Political Economy.
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One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
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Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led.
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O Time! Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing!
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I have no patience whatever with these gorilla damnifications of humanity.
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This London City, with all of its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic an tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One-a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick.
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Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.
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"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith."
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Habit is the deepest law of human nature.
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Neither let mistakes and wrong directions - of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many - discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling - a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement! - it is emblematic of all things a man does.
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The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
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Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.
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Leaders: Captains of industry.
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The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself.
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Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
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For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
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A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.
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The great soul of this world is just.
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Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
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If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
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There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire.
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This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.
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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.
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The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes.