Quotes by Carlyle, Thomas

"Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another; nor could it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world."

Carlyle, Thomas on money   

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"For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion."

Carlyle, Thomas on morality   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on motivation
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"If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music."

Carlyle, Thomas on music
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"One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music."

Carlyle, Thomas on music
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"Song is the heroics of speech."

Carlyle, Thomas on music   

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite."

Carlyle, Thomas on music   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on mystery   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on opinions   

"The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive."

Carlyle, Thomas on past   

"Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man."

Carlyle, Thomas on payment   

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"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on perfection   

"Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak."

Carlyle, Thomas on perseverance
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"Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. If a person speaks with genuine earnestness the thoughts, the emotion and the actual condition of their own heart, others will listen because we all are knit together by the tie of sympathy."

Carlyle, Thomas on persuasion
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"Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world."

Carlyle, Thomas on persuasion   

"Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence."

Carlyle, Thomas on politics   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on politics   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on association   

"Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world."

Carlyle, Thomas on popularity   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on potential   

"Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others."

Carlyle, Thomas on potential
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"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on present   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on present   

"There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems."

Carlyle, Thomas on proverbs
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"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?"

Carlyle, Thomas on public opinion   

"The purpose of man is in action not thought."

Carlyle, Thomas on purpose
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"The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder -- waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you."

Carlyle, Thomas on purpose
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"No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment."

Carlyle, Thomas on quality
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"Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than fiction."

Carlyle, Thomas on reality   

"A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason."

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

Carlyle, Thomas on reform   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on reform   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on repentance   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on responsibility   

"No age seemed the age of romance to itself."

Carlyle, Thomas on romance and romanticism   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on sarcasm   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on science   

"The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist."

Carlyle, Thomas on time   

"Silence is more eloquent than words."

Carlyle, Thomas on silence
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"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves."

Carlyle, Thomas on silence