Thomas Carlyle Quotes
-
Society is founded on hero-worship.
-
A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.
-
Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.
-
Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.
-
Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led.
-
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
-
Force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?" As used in his time, by the word force, Carlyle means energy.
-
No violent extreme endures.
-
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.
-
With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl around, and simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, offhand, become air, and non-extant--the little spitfires!
-
Wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.
-
It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.
-
The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin.
-
It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defeats than to boast of our attainments.
-
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.
-
The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself.
-
I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century; 800 years ago the Norwegians were still worshipers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways.
-
The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.
-
The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.
-
The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.
-
A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever.
-
Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.
-
Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own.
-
Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged, all-nourishing earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much more her darling man?