Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

- Thomas Carlyle

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

- Thomas Carlyle

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

- Thomas Carlyle

Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.

- Thomas Carlyle

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

- Thomas Carlyle

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

- Thomas Carlyle

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

- Thomas Carlyle

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

- Thomas Carlyle

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

- Thomas Carlyle

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.

- Thomas Carlyle

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

- Thomas Carlyle

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

- Thomas Carlyle

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

- Thomas Carlyle

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

- Thomas Carlyle

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

- Thomas Carlyle

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

- Thomas Carlyle

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

- Thomas Carlyle

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

- Thomas Carlyle

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.

- Thomas Carlyle

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

- Thomas Carlyle

The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.

- Thomas Carlyle

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

- Thomas Carlyle

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

- Thomas Carlyle

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

- Thomas Carlyle

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

- Thomas Carlyle

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

- Thomas Carlyle

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.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

- Thomas Carlyle

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

- Thomas Carlyle

Endurance is patience concentrated.

- Thomas Carlyle

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.

- Thomas Carlyle

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

- Thomas Carlyle

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

- Thomas Carlyle

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

- Thomas Carlyle

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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.

- Thomas Carlyle

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

- Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

- Thomas Carlyle

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

- Thomas Carlyle

Wonder is the basis of worship.

- Thomas Carlyle

Worship is transcendent wonder.

- Thomas Carlyle

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

- Thomas Carlyle

Silence is more eloquent than words.

- Thomas Carlyle

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

- Thomas Carlyle

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

- Thomas Carlyle

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.

- Thomas Carlyle

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

- Thomas Carlyle

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

- Thomas Carlyle

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

- Thomas Carlyle

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

- Thomas Carlyle

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

- Thomas Carlyle

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.

- Thomas Carlyle

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

- Thomas Carlyle

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

- Thomas Carlyle

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

- Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

- Thomas Carlyle

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

- Thomas Carlyle

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

- Thomas Carlyle

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

- Thomas Carlyle

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

- Thomas Carlyle

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

- Thomas Carlyle

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

- Thomas Carlyle

No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.

- Thomas Carlyle

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

- Thomas Carlyle

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

- Thomas Carlyle

The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

- Thomas Carlyle

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther.

- Thomas Carlyle

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

- Thomas Carlyle

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

- Thomas Carlyle

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

- Thomas Carlyle

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

- Thomas Carlyle

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

- Thomas Carlyle

Thought is the parent of the deed.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

No pressure, no diamonds.

- Thomas Carlyle

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

- Thomas Carlyle

No violent extreme endures.

- Thomas Carlyle

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

- Thomas Carlyle

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

- Thomas Carlyle

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

- Thomas Carlyle

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

- Thomas Carlyle

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

- Thomas Carlyle

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

- Thomas Carlyle

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

- Thomas Carlyle

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

- Thomas Carlyle

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

- Thomas Carlyle

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

- Thomas Carlyle

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

- Thomas Carlyle

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

- Thomas Carlyle

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

- Thomas Carlyle

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

- Thomas Carlyle

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

- Thomas Carlyle

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

- Thomas Carlyle

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

- Thomas Carlyle

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

- Thomas Carlyle

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

- Thomas Carlyle

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

- Thomas Carlyle

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

- Thomas Carlyle

History, a distillation of rumour.

- Thomas Carlyle

Be not a slave of words.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

- Thomas Carlyle

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

- Thomas Carlyle

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

- Thomas Carlyle

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

- Thomas Carlyle

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

- Thomas Carlyle

Every noble work is at first impossible.

- Thomas Carlyle

Work alone is noble.

- Thomas Carlyle

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

- Thomas Carlyle

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

- Thomas Carlyle

No person is important enough to make me angry.

- Thomas Carlyle

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

- Thomas Carlyle

All great peoples are conservative.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

- Thomas Carlyle

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

- Thomas Carlyle

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

- Thomas Carlyle

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

- Thomas Carlyle

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

- Thomas Carlyle

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

- Thomas Carlyle