Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lyi...

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

Of all the paths a man could strike into there is at any given moment a best path ... a thing whi...

Today is not yesterday how can our works and thoughts if they are always to be the fittest contin...

Speech is silvern silence is golden.

All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.

His religion at best is an anxious wish - like that of Rebelais a great Perhaps.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

Hero-worship exists has existed and will forever exist universally among mankind.

Give me a man who sings at his work.

Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of custom: but of all these perhaps the clever...

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

In the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people with their wisdom and unwisdom.

The end of man is action.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Work alone is noble.

Every noble crown is and on earth will ever be a crown of thorns.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man ...

Of a truth men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt.

The whole universe is but a huge Symbol of god".

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything

The present is the living sum-total of the whole past.

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Silence is deep as Eternity speech shallow as Time.

The greatest of faults I should say is to be conscious of none.

A fair day's wages for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of govern...

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man, but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundre...

Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher some spiritual hero.

All work is seed sown. It grows and spreads and sows itself anew.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

He that can work is a born king of something.

I grow daily to honor facts more and more and theory less and less.

Experience is the best of schoolmasters only the school-fees are heavy.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, tha...

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.

Debt is a bottomless sea.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundre...

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The three great elements of modern civilization Gunpowder Printing and the Protestant Religion.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and o...

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confi...

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the...

(Quoted by Thomas Carlyle) The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more ref...

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

Biography is the only true history.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greate...

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him if he front it not bravel...

If you can walk you can dance. Zimbabwe saying Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into...

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boy...

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more...

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully.

The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature's own heart - all else is wind in comparison.

There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly m...

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is lo...

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a steppingstone in the pa...

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibili...

If Jesus Christ were to come today people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner ...

Every noble work is at first impossible.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of...

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may em...

Well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.

Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou...

A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of...

Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men tall.

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery ...

Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern...

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgrace...

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.

There are impertinent inquiries made; your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on the matter; ...

It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was...

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

Time is the silent never-resting thing ... rolling rushing on swift silent like an all-embracin...

Poetry therefore we will call Musical Thought.

Macaulay is well for awhile but one wouldn't live under Niagara.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing whic...

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Man is a tool-using animal.