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 tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Suffering, Life
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
Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Experience
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Invention
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle, wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: World, Science
The purpose of man is in action not thought.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Purpose
Rest is a fine medicine. Let your stomachs rest, ye dyspeptics; let your brain rest, you wearied and worried men of business; let your limbs rest, ye children of toil.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Rest
If the cut of the costume indicates intellect and talent, then the color indicates temper and heart.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fashion
It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Influence, Leadership
Every noble work is at first impossible.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Optimism, Perseverance, Positive Attitudes, Action, Work, Health
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
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
Topics: Satisfaction
If Jesus Christ were to come today people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he has to say, and make fun of it.
—Thomas Carlyle
All great peoples are conservative.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Conservatives
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Honesty
The meaning of song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that!
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Music
Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Effort
If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Despair
A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Concentration, Focus
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
Cherish what is dearest while you have it near you, and wait not till it is far away. Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust clouds and dissonances of the moment, and all be made at last so mournfully clear and beautiful, when it is too late.
—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
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
Topics: Education, Reading, Books, Libraries
Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Money
By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Change, Miscellaneous
No age seemed the age of romance to itself.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Romance
All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Books
Wonderful “Force of Public Opinion!” We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of “influence” it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Opinion, Public opinion
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Legacy, Biography
[History] may be called, more generally still, the Message, verbal or written, which all Mankind delivers to everyman.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: History
One of the Godlike things of this world is the veneration done to human worth by the hearts of men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Appreciation
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
The older I grow—and I now stand on the brink of eternity—the more comes back to me that sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes: “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Man
The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Wisdom, Events
The present is the living sum-total of the whole past.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: The Present
Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Experience
The king is the man who can.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Ability
Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Leadership, Leaders
Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grows meaner and more hostile.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Eternity
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