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Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

Scottish author, essayist, & historian (1795 - 1881)

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

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

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

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

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

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

The Courage that we all prize and seek is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

When words leave off, music begins.

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

Happy are the people whose annals are blank in history books

Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laugther, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.

It is not a lucky word, this name "impossible"; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

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