Quotes by Carlyle, Thomas

"Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope."

Carlyle, Thomas on change
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"Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are. It shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be."

Carlyle, Thomas on character
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"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on cheerfulness   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on cheerfulness   

"In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched."

Carlyle, Thomas on symbols   

"When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances."

Carlyle, Thomas on technology   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on temperament   

"Thought is the parent of the deed."

Carlyle, Thomas on thoughts and thinking   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on thoughts and thinking   

"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated reading deserves to be read at all."

Carlyle, Thomas on time   

"The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it."

Carlyle, Thomas on time
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"Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all."

Carlyle, Thomas on tools   

"No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy."

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

Carlyle, Thomas on unemployment   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on happiness   

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"Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another, and all against evil only."

Carlyle, Thomas on unity   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on universe   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on upbringing   

"Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!"

Carlyle, Thomas on upper class   

"Variety is the condition of harmony."

Carlyle, Thomas on variety   

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"No conquest can ever become permanent which does not show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors."

Carlyle, Thomas on victory   

"Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man."

Carlyle, Thomas on virtue   

"No man sees far, most see no farther than their noses."

Carlyle, Thomas on vision   

"I have seen gleams in the face and eyes of the man that have let you look into a higher country."

Carlyle, Thomas on vision   

"It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe."

Carlyle, Thomas on vocation   

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"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work."

Carlyle, Thomas on wages   

"Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser."

Carlyle, Thomas on wisdom   

"The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person."

Carlyle, Thomas on wisdom   

"Wonder is the basis of worship."

Carlyle, Thomas on wonder   

"A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man."

Carlyle, Thomas on work   

"Every noble work is at first impossible."

Carlyle, Thomas on work
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"Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments, Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at."

Carlyle, Thomas on work   

"Work alone is noble."

Carlyle, Thomas on work   

"Worship is transcendent wonder."

Carlyle, Thomas on worship   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on writers and writing   

"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."

Carlyle, Thomas on youth   

"The king is the man who can."

Carlyle, Thomas on ability
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"What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite."

Carlyle, Thomas on ability   

"Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity."

Carlyle, Thomas on adversity   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on churches