Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was an eminent—and controversial—Scottish historian, political philosopher, and essayist from the Victorian era.
Known for his incisive critique of British society, Carlyle was one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century. However, since the early 1900s, his work has been criticized for his belief that powerful, heroic individuals can transform the course of humanity and for his adoration of the Germanic spirit—both of which invigorated Nazi ideologues.
Carlyle studied and translated German literature in his early years. Some of his earliest writings describe a polarity between the “sacrificial seriousness” of the German culture and the “superficial, pleasure-seeking” British culture. In Signs of the Times (1829,) he described the chasm between the material advancements of the machine age and the soulless mediocrity of “modern man.”
Carlyle’s first truly successful book was The French Revolution (3 vols., 1837.) Considered a reliable account of the early course of the Revolution, it was used for reference by Charles Dickens while writing his A Tale of Two Cities (1859.)
At the core of Carlyle’s political philosophy was his attribution of all historical progress solely to mighty heroes who served as role models for how people should live. He wrote, “No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He expounded these beliefs in The French Revolution, On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841,) and History of Frederick the Great (6 vols., 1858–65.) These books profoundly influenced German and Italian fascism and painted Carlyle as a progenitor of the concept of totalitarian regimes.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Carlyle
The true epic of our times is not “arms and the man,” but “tools and the man,” an infinitely wider kind of epic.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Man, Labor
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Time, Time Management
In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Books
Fame is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such, it is an accident, not a property of man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fame
In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people’s disputes but he heartily repented of it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Life, Gossip
The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Hell
Nothing ever happens but once in this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Action
Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Truth
They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Difficulties
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
Topics: Humility, Independence
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Technology
The purpose of man is in action not thought.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Purpose
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Criticism, Critics
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Judgment, Judging, Judges
All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble … A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.
—Thomas Carlyle
We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named “fair competition” and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Society
Little dew-drops of celestial melody.
—Thomas Carlyle
Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Money
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
—Thomas Carlyle
It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Career
A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong man … A man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Strength
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Imagination
One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Music
The spiritual is the parent of the practical.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Spirituality, Spirit
Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Reform, Correction
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
Topics: Imagination
The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder and worship, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Wonder
Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Health, Virtues, Virtue
Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Experience
A man’s honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this, if he is to communicate anything.
—Thomas Carlyle
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—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
Topics: Age
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
Topics: Legacy, Biography
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Churches, Religion
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
—Thomas Carlyle
The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Wisdom
The king is the man who can.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Ability
The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls, roofed in and lighted for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl, or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
—Thomas Carlyle
Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Heroism, Heroes/Heroism, Heroes
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
Topics: Competition
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