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, Admiration, Respect
A noble book! All men’s book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem,—man’s destiny, and God’s ways with him here on earth; and all in such free-flowing outlines,—grand in its sincerity; in its simplicity and its epic melody.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Bible
There is endless merit in a man’s knowing when to have done.
—Thomas Carlyle
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
—Thomas Carlyle
What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Tradition
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Silence
The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Personality
Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Action
The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Emotions
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, – Necessity and Free Will.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Freedom
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Service, Helping
Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Potential
I don’t pretend to understand the Universe—it’s a great deal bigger than I am.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Universe, The Universe
One life – a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
—Thomas Carlyle
The purpose of man is in action not thought.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Purpose
Look up, and behold the eternal fields of light that lie round about the throne of God. Had no star ever appeared in the heavens, to man there would have been no heavens; and he would have laid himself down to his last sleep, in a spirit of anguish, as upon a gloomy earth vaulted over by a material arch—solid and impervious.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Stars
Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Experience
Song is the heroics of speech.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Music, Speech
Society is founded upon cloth.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fashion
The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Invention
Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Argument, Skepticism
All great peoples are conservative.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Conservatives
Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Mystery
Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Perseverance, Virtues, Persistence
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
The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Soul
Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven’t you two eyes of your own.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Individuality
Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Cynicism
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Anger, Forgiveness
In the huge mass of evil as it rolls and swells, there is ever some good working toward deliverance and triumph.
—Thomas Carlyle
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