Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.
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The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
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Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.
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Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own.
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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.
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The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice.
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It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.
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All great peoples are conservative.
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In a certain sense all men are historians.
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The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
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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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To the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant.
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Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books!
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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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Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other.
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Laughter means sympathy.
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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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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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If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
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The great soul of this world is just.
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Society is founded upon Cloth.
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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!
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A pygmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there alone finds rest.
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Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!