Thomas Carlyle Quotes

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Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age.

Thomas Carlyle
The moment of discovery, "spontaneous illumination..." The infinite is made to blend itself with the finite, to stand visible, as it were, attainable there.

Thomas Carlyle
Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.

Thomas Carlyle
[Nature] is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in a true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line.

Thomas Carlyle
In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him.

Thomas Carlyle
A thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such an one announces himself, I doubt not there runs a shudder through the nether empire; and new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap and hoodwink and handcuff him.

Thomas Carlyle
High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge.

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

Thomas Carlyle
Is man's civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?

Thomas Carlyle
Work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at all things.

Thomas Carlyle
One is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is not evil to be poor.

Thomas Carlyle
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.

Thomas Carlyle
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.

Thomas Carlyle
Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.

Thomas Carlyle
Unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity.

Thomas Carlyle
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.

Thomas Carlyle
The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.

Thomas Carlyle
A man's honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this if he is to communicate anything.

Thomas Carlyle
Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led.

Thomas Carlyle
Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.

Thomas Carlyle
It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

Thomas Carlyle
Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

Thomas Carlyle
Genuine Work alone, what thou workest faithfully, that is eternal, as the Almighty Founder and World-Builder himself.

Thomas Carlyle
We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, - the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish.

Thomas Carlyle
Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?

Thomas Carlyle
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?

Thomas Carlyle
Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

Thomas Carlyle
Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter.

Thomas Carlyle
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.

Thomas Carlyle
Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

Thomas Carlyle