Thomas Carlyle Quotes (481 quotes, page 3)

“To the very last, he had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents,—the tools to him that can handle them.”

Thomas Carlyle

On Napoleon; Carlyle in his essay on Mirabeau, 1837, quotes this from a "New England book".
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Idea

“What is all Knowledge too, but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials.”

Thomas Carlyle

On History.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
Variant: What is all Knowledge too, but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials.

History , Knowledge , Passion

“On the dust of our heroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops forever,—find it now in too questionable a state.”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Dreams , Question , Laughter , Box

“The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Men , World , History

“Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Soul , Literature , Thinking

“Wonder is the basis of worship.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. I, ch. 10.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

“The "imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbors.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Imagination , Hell , Time

“There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.”

Thomas Carlyle

Dr. Francia (1845).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)

Flying

“To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on occasion; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible on demand for what of "gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic worth already acquired for him, naturally demanded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A valuable superaddition of faculty:—and yet we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty; it was but the tangible sign of what other faculties the man had in the silent state.”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Wisdom , Nature

“He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill- being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,—Heaven's blessed life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation. 'Hero-worship,' if you will,—yes, friends; but, first of all, by being ourselves of heroic mind.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Men , God , World

“Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. III, ch. 7.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

“Man, little as he may suppose it, is necessitated to obey superiors. He is a social being in virtue of this necessity; nay he could not be gregarious otherwise. He obeys those whom he esteems better than himself, wiser, braver; and will forever obey such; and even be ready and delighted to do it.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

“I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Men , World

“"Schiller", first published in Fraser's Magazine”

Thomas Carlyle

1831
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. 'Know thyself:' long enough has that poor 'self' of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to 'know' it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

World , Art , Business , Thinking

“I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

World , Nature , Fight

“Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said.”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , World , Hope , History

“The inventive genius of great England will not forever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a Beaver's, or a Spinner's or Spider's genius: it is a Man's genius, I hope, with a God over him!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

God , Hope

“Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Men , Shoe , Light , Water

“I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive; consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

People , Light

“"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. I, ch. 3.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men

“it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Laughter

“For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another side of the one vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Way , Error , Imagination , Courage

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

Thomas Carlyle

Notebooks (1830).
1830s

Art , Silence , Learning , Dead

“Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

Perfection , Country , Box

“Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Heart

“The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped up in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them; — you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Peace , Music , Way , Idea

“Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Art

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

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

World , Way

“Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Nature

“Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

“He has now a second far greater success to gain: to seek out his real superiors, whom not the Tailor but the Almighty God has made superior to him, and see a little what he will do with these! Rebel against these also? Pass by with minatory eagle-glance, with calm-sniffing mockery, or even without any mockery or sniff, when these present themselves? The lion-hearted will never dream of such a thing. Forever far be it from him! His minatory eagle-glance will veil itself in softness of the dove: his lion- heart will become a lamb's; all is just indignation changed into just reverence, dissolved in blessed floods of noble humble love, how much heavenlier than any pride, nay, if you will, how much prouder!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Love , God , Dreams , Change

“At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

Men , Reality , Teachers

“There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Men , Truth , Idea , Strong

“A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.”

Thomas Carlyle

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Reading , Perfection

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

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. III, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Knowledge

“Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. III, ch. 8.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

“Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently? The word that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakspeare's morality, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Men , Truth , Secret , World

“Literary men are…a perpetual priesthood.”

Thomas Carlyle

The State of German Literature.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Men

“Who is there that can recognize real intellect, and do reverence to it; and discriminate it well from sham intellect, which is so much more abundant, and deserves the reverse of reverence? He that himself has it!—One really human Intellect, invested with command, and charged to reform Downing Street for us, would continually attract real intellect to those regions, and with a divine magnetism search it out from the modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession of intellect to Downing Street would bring to it benefit only, and would increase such divine attraction in it, the parent of all benefit there and elsewhere!”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Search , Parent

“A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life , Light , Passion

“The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in?”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)

World

“The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. III, ch. 5.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

People

“These are the two vices that beset Government Offices; both of them originating in insufficient Intellect,—that sad insufficiency from which, directly or indirectly, all evil whatsoever springs!”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Sadness , Spring , Evil

“War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.”

Thomas Carlyle

Quoted by Emma Goldman in her essay, "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", chapter five of Anarchism and Other Essays (2nd revised edition, 1911).
Attributed

War , Boy , Fight

“Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;—till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;—is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life , Death , Men , God

“in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

People , World , History , Light

“Work is the grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—honest work, which you intend getting done.”

Thomas Carlyle

Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (April 2, 1866), reported in A dictionary of quotations in prose, edited by A. L. Ward (1889).
Attributed