Quotes by Carlyle, Thomas

"The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion."

Carlyle, Thomas on civilization
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"Clever men are good, but they are not the best."

Carlyle, Thomas on cleverness   

"A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads."

Carlyle, Thomas on commitment   

"Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility."

Carlyle, Thomas on competition   

"The archenemy is the arch stupid!"

Carlyle, Thomas on conflict   

"All great peoples are conservative."

Carlyle, Thomas on conservatives   

"The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off."

Carlyle, Thomas on controversy   

"Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!"

Carlyle, Thomas on cooking   

"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully."

Carlyle, Thomas on courage   

"A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner."

Carlyle, Thomas on crafts   

"No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people."

Carlyle, Thomas on criticism   

"Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,honest work, which you intend getting done. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised
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"Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"That a Parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only. "

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

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

Carlyle, Thomas on uncategorised   

"The Mystic Bond of Brotherhood makes all men one."

Carlyle, Thomas on brotherhood