Thomas Carlyle Quotes

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable.

No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.

All evil is like a nightmare; the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.

Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.

To be true is manly, chivalrous, Christian; to be false is mean, cowardly, devilish.

What this country needs is a man who knows God other than by heresay.

To know, to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic art, of which the best logic's can but babble on the surface.

Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

What I loved in the man was his health, his unity with himself; all people and all things seemed to find their quite peaceable adjustment with him, not a proud domineering one, as after doubtful contest, but a spontaneous-looking peaceable, even humble one.

The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.

It is great, and there is no other greatness-to make one nook of God's Creation more fruitful, better, more worthy of God; to make some human heart a little wiser, manlier, happier-more blessed.

Produce, produce! Were it but the pitifulest, infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name. 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee? Out with it then! Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might.

Let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.

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

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.

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.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement.

A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.

The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.

A man--be the heavens ever praised!--is sufficient for himself.

Teaching school is but another word for sure and not very slow destruction.

If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

History is the new poetry.

It is not a lucky word, this name impossible; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.

Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other.

So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.

Lies exist only to be extinguished.

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.

Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.

The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.

Dishonesty is the raw material not of quacks only, but also in great part dupes.

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

It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.