Thomas Carlyle - Sartor Resartus (1833)

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To each is given a certain inward talent, a certain outward environment or fortune; to each by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum capacity.

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
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
Heroes, it would seem, exist always and a certain worship of them.

Thomas Carlyle
Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?

Thomas Carlyle
Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.

Thomas Carlyle
How indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil.

Thomas Carlyle
We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.

Thomas Carlyle
Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grassblade, and to most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams.

Thomas Carlyle
What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words.... Be not the slave of Words...

Thomas Carlyle
What are your historical Facts still more your biographical Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts

Thomas Carlyle
Neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident.

Thomas Carlyle
That monstrous tuberosity of civilised life, the capital of England.

Thomas Carlyle
Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a whole universe?

Thomas Carlyle
Whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,to the length of sixpence.

Thomas Carlyle
Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after; the more surprising that we do not look around a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.

Thomas Carlyle
Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.

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
A very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.

Thomas Carlyle
The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.

Thomas Carlyle
Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!

Thomas Carlyle
A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever.

Thomas Carlyle
There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.

Thomas Carlyle
Does it not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of eighteen tailors, address them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both!'

Thomas Carlyle
As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden—"Speech is silvern, Silence is golden"; or, as I might rather express it, speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

Thomas Carlyle
The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike.

Thomas Carlyle
Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.

Thomas Carlyle
Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.

Thomas Carlyle
With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

Thomas Carlyle
Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.

Thomas Carlyle