The all-importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy, without effort, like an instinct of genius: he is inspired with cloth—a poet of clothing.
—Thomas Carlyle
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 Management, Time
Society is founded upon cloth.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fashion
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
Topics: Facts
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
Topics: Humor
Worship is transcendent wonder.
—Thomas Carlyle
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Beginnings, Beginning
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
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: Labor, Man
Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: History
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
One of the Godlike things of this world is the veneration done to human worth by the hearts of men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Appreciation
Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Action
The spiritual is the parent of the practical.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Invention
The idea is in thyself. The impediment, too, is in thyself.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Ideas
Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Royalty
History is the first distinct product of man’s spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what can be called thought.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: History
All evil is like a nightmare; the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Evil
If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Music
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
Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, but the stars are there, and will reappear.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Religion
Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from the delusive to the real, and make a new blessed world of us bye and bye.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Democracy
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: Time, Value of Time, Doing Your Best, The Present, Action, Time Management, Present, Vision, Life, Duty
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature—that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Books, Writing, Literature
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
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
The eye of the intellect sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Honesty
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Hugh Blair Scottish Minister, Scholar
- Walter Scott Scottish Novelist
- James Mill Scottish Philosopher
- Hugh Miller Scottish Geologist, Writer
- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey Scottish Judge, Critic
- Adam Smith Scottish Philosopher
- Thomas Reid Scottish Philosopher
- David Hume Scottish Philosopher, Historian
- J. M. Barrie Scottish Novelist
- Robert Louis Stevenson Scottish Novelist
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