Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

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.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

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.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

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.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.

No violent extreme endures.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

I grow daily to honour 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.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

All great peoples are conservative.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

No pressure, no diamonds.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.