Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation,—till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Laughter
The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Money
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: Leadership, Influence
I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Bible
It is not a lucky word, this same impossible; no good comes of those that have it so often in their mouth.
—Thomas Carlyle
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: Biography, Legacy
I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Conversation
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Originality
Violence does even justice unjustly.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Violence
Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Class
Heroes have gone out, quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nine teenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. One portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.
—Thomas Carlyle
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
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 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
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 great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Ability, Achievements, Excellence
Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
—Thomas Carlyle
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose… Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is… Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Happiness, Labor, Work
There is a calm, viscous insensibility which will baffle even the gods, and calmly say, Try all your lightnings here, and see whether I cannot quench them.
—Thomas Carlyle
But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Happiness
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Heart
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Conviction
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Knowledge
The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind, honest work, which you intend getting done.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Work
One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Music
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Aristocracy, Society, Class, Talent
Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Advice
In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people’s disputes but he heartily repented of it.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Life, Gossip
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
Leave a Reply