Quotes by Carlyle, Thomas

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

Carlyle, Thomas on hell   

"Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men."

Carlyle, Thomas on heroes and heroism   

"History is the distillation of rumor."

Carlyle, Thomas on history and historians   

"Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles."

Carlyle, Thomas on history and historians   

"The whole past is the procession of the present."

Carlyle, Thomas on history and historians   

"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

Carlyle, Thomas on history and historians
6 fans of this quote   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on honesty   

"Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature."

Carlyle, Thomas on humankind   

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"Painful for a person is rebellious independence, only in loving companionship with his associates does a person feel safe: Only in reverently bowing down before the higher does a person feel exalted."

Carlyle, Thomas on humility   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on humor   

"The actual well seen is ideal."

Carlyle, Thomas on ideals and idealism   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on ignorance   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on imagination   

"Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, priest and prophet to lead us to heaven-ward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward."

Carlyle, Thomas on imagination   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on impossibility   

"Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own."

Carlyle, Thomas on individuality   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on influence   

"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight."

Carlyle, Thomas on insights   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on invention and inventor   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on judgment and judges   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on judgment and judges   

"He that can work is born to be king of something."

Carlyle, Thomas on kings   

"Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work."

Carlyle, Thomas on labor   

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"Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man"

Carlyle, Thomas on laughter   

"The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception."

Carlyle, Thomas on laughter
3 fans of this quote   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on laughter   

"Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so."

Carlyle, Thomas on leadership   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on libraries
5 fans of this quote   

"In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it."

Carlyle, Thomas on life   

"The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss."

Carlyle, Thomas on life   

"Life is a little gleam of time between two eternity s."

Carlyle, Thomas on life   

"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves."

Carlyle, Thomas on anger
3 fans of this quote   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on argument   

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"We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people."

Carlyle, Thomas on criticism   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on literature   

"Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man."

Carlyle, Thomas on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on love
5 fans of this quote   

"For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer."

Carlyle, Thomas on machinery   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on materialism   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on mediocrity