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
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Women
The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Wealth
Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Opinion, Lies
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Originality
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Present, Vision, Value of Time, Time, Life, Time Management, Action, Duty, The Present, Doing Your Best
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty.
—Thomas Carlyle
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: One liners, Greatness
If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Enemies, Fighting
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will daily grow more and more right. It is at the bottom of the condition on which all men have to cultivate themselves.
—Thomas Carlyle
The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
—Thomas Carlyle
Men’s hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another, and all against evil only.
—Thomas Carlyle
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Work, Unemployment
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Duty, Doing
Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.
—Thomas Carlyle
A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.
—Thomas Carlyle
Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Books, Biography
Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
—Thomas Carlyle
Today is not yesterday.—We ourselves change.—How then, 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
Topics: Change
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Perfection
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
—Thomas Carlyle
Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
—Thomas Carlyle
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether and irreclaimably depraved.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Laughter
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
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Greatness, History, Greatness & Great Things
Silence is more eloquent than words.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Silence
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Suffering
The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fear
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
—Thomas Carlyle
Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Civilization
By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Change
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Unhappiness
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man’s life.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Heroes/Heroism
The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
—Thomas Carlyle
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Despair
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
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