Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all of these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous.
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No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
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History is a great dust heap.
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Venerable to me is the hard hand,--crooked, coarse,--wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.
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It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.
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Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
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Love not Pleasure; love God.
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The great law of culture is, Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth; resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature be these what they may.
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Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
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I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
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Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.
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Does it ever give thee pause that men used to have a soul? Not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech, but as a thruth that they knew and acted upon. Verily it was another world then, but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls. We shall have to go in search of them again or worse in all ways shall befall us.
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Coining "Dismal Science" as a nickname for Political Economy.
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Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke...let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things.
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There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
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The aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of the money-bag.
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It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.
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True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.
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I have no patience whatever with these gorilla damnifications of humanity.
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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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Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!
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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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Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.
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A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.