Thomas Carlyle

The king is the man who can.

— Thomas Carlyle

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

— Thomas Carlyle

Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.

— Thomas Carlyle

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

— Thomas Carlyle

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

— Thomas Carlyle

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

— Thomas Carlyle

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

— Thomas Carlyle

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

— Thomas Carlyle

It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.

— Thomas Carlyle

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

— Thomas Carlyle

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

— Thomas Carlyle

The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against unbelief.

— Thomas Carlyle

The most fearful unbelief is unbelief in your self.

— Thomas Carlyle

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

— Thomas Carlyle

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

— Thomas Carlyle

If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.

— Thomas Carlyle

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

— Thomas Carlyle

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

— Thomas Carlyle

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

— Thomas Carlyle

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

— Thomas Carlyle

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

— Thomas Carlyle

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

— Thomas Carlyle

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

— Thomas Carlyle

The true past departs not, no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

The archenemy is the arch stupid!

— Thomas Carlyle

All great peoples are conservative.

— Thomas Carlyle

The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.

— Thomas Carlyle

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!

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

— Thomas Carlyle

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

— Thomas Carlyle

The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.

— Thomas Carlyle

The devil has his elect.

— Thomas Carlyle

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.

— Thomas Carlyle

No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

— Thomas Carlyle

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

— Thomas Carlyle

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

— Thomas Carlyle

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

— Thomas Carlyle

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

— Thomas Carlyle

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

— Thomas Carlyle

The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won't in the end affirm or deny anything.

— Thomas Carlyle

All evil is like a nightmare; the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.

— Thomas Carlyle

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

— Thomas Carlyle

No violent extreme endures.

— Thomas Carlyle

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

— 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

I grow daily to honor facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing -- a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

— Thomas Carlyle

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

— Thomas Carlyle

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

— Thomas Carlyle

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.

— Thomas Carlyle

Society is founded upon cloth.

— Thomas Carlyle

If the cut of the costume indicates intellect and talent, then the color indicates temper and heart.

— Thomas Carlyle

The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

— Thomas Carlyle

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

— Thomas Carlyle

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

— Thomas Carlyle

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

— Thomas Carlyle

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

— Thomas Carlyle

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

— Thomas Carlyle

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

— Thomas Carlyle

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

— Thomas Carlyle

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

— Thomas Carlyle

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

— Thomas Carlyle

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

— Thomas Carlyle

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

— Thomas Carlyle

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!

— Thomas Carlyle

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

History is the distillation of rumor.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

The whole past is the procession of the present.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature.

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

The actual well seen is ideal.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle