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Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, translator, historian, and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the Great Man".

A respected historian, his 1837 book The French Revolution: A History was the inspiration for Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, and remains popular today. Carlyle's 1836 Sartor Resartus is a notable philosophical novel.

A great polemicist, Carlyle coined the term "the dismal science" for economics. He also wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and his Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question remains controversial. Once a Christian, Carlyle lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, later adopting a form of deism.

In mathematics, he is known for the Carlyle circle, a method used in quadratic equations and for developing ruler-and-compass constructions of regular polygons.

✵ 4. December 1795 – 5. February 1881   •   Other names Томас Карлайл
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Thomas Carlyle Quotes

“Fire is the best of servents; but what a master!”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. II, ch. 9.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

“To this man life is already as earnest and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Death , Beauty

“To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.”

Thomas Carlyle

Pt. I, Bk. III, ch. 7.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

“It must have been in his teens, perhaps rather early, that he and his elder brother John, with William Bell (afterwards of Wylie Hill, and a noted drover) and his brother, all met in the kiln at Eelief to play cards. The corn was dried then at home. There was a fire, therefore, aud perhaps it was both heat and light. The boys had played, perhaps, often enough for trifling stakes, and always parted in good humor. One night they came to some disagreement. My father spoke out what was in him about the folly, the sinfulness, of quarreling over a perhaps sinful amusement. The earnest mind persuaded other minds. They threw the cards into the fire, and (I think the younger Bell told my brother James) no one of the four ever touched a card again through life. My father certainly never hinted at such a game since I knew him. I cannot remember that I, at that age, had any such force of belief. Which of us can?”

Thomas Carlyle

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Life , Age , Home , Game

“The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Mood

“Mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Lie , School , Way , Learning

“In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,—probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.”

Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Suffering , Falseness , Country

“It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Heart , Joy

“Complete, at the same time, was his confidence in his own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was one of those few that could believe and know as well as inquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it himself, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit of the genuine man.”

Thomas Carlyle

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Confidence , Decision , Time

“The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.”

Thomas Carlyle

Journal (1835).
1830s

“All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

“If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space.”

Thomas Carlyle

On other stars
Attributed by John Burroughs on the first page of his 1920 book Accepting The Universe
Attributed by Carl Sagan at a November 20, 1972 symposium on "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man", held at Boston University
[Berendzen, Richard, ed., Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, 1973, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office, Washington, DC, LCCN 73-600150]
"Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man 1975", Google Video, c. 0:02:50, 2006-09-11 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8949469271181885482&q=owner%3Anara+type%3Anasa, Edited version of symposium, released by National Archives, under Google Video partnership http://www.archives.gov/google/.
Attributed
Variant: A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. It they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.

“Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Men , Truth , World , Religion

“The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him; teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure,—among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;—not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should have something to speak!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Wisdom , Men , God

“This great maxim of Philosophy he had gathered by the teaching of nature alone: That man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream.”

Thomas Carlyle

Reminiscences (1881), referring to his father, James Carlyle.
Sometimes quoted as "Man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream; Every idle moment is treason". The second of those two clauses in fact comes from Thomas Arnold The Christian Life (1841), Lecture VI.
1880s

Dreams , Feeling , Nature

“Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.”

Thomas Carlyle

Bk. I, ch. 9.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

Men

“Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Truth , Justice , Way , Nature

“No solitary miscreant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would venture on such actions and imaginations, as large communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, entertained as sound wisdom.”

Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Wisdom , Men , Imagination , Communication

“And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,—might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Men , Children , Democracy , Universe

“Man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the noble People that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely.”

Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

People , Sense

“they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Death , Men , Religion

“"The people may eat grass": hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable—and will send back tidings.”

Thomas Carlyle

Pt. I, Bk. III, ch. 9.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

People , Grass , Flying

“One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Chance , Time

“From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Death , Men , God

“His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Men , Pleasure , World , Religion

“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Religion

“and some others that I have seen, were perhaps among the first. There is no third rising. Time sweeps all away with it so fast at this epoch. The Scottish Church has been short-lived, and was late in reaching thither.”

Thomas Carlyle

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Time

“I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Men , Health , Truth

“I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.”

Thomas Carlyle

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Men , Success

“In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;—guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

World , Light , Time

“Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?”

Thomas Carlyle

Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (1866), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

Truth

“A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.”

Thomas Carlyle

Essays, Goethe's Works.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Men

“grave talk and grave humor with the doers of the craft. Building, walling, is an operation that beyond most other manual ones requires incessant consideration — even new invention. I have heard good judges say that he excelled in it all persons they had seen.”

Thomas Carlyle

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Personality

“At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 'But are ye sure he's not a dunce?”

Thomas Carlyle

Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Men , Hope , Nature , Singing

“Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what never-imagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; down almost to total extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind!”

Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Money , Imagination , Sense

“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”

Thomas Carlyle

Attributed to Carlyle in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends And Influence People (1936), but this quotation is not found in Carlyle's known works. The first mention found in Google Books dates from 1908, where the Rev. John Timothy Stone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Timothy_Stone is quoted as claiming: 'The greatest critics of this world have been appreciators. Carlyle said, "You can discover a great man, or see a great man, by the way he treats little men.'
The quotation is subsequently found in slightly different forms, mostly in religious publications: "A great man shows his greatness by manner in which he treats little men" (1913, unattributed); The exact wording of Carnegie's quote suggests that it was taken from Stone's 1930 publication.
Disputed

Men , Way

“he seldom or never spoke except actually to convey an idea. Measured by quantity of words, he was a talker of fully average copiousness; by extent of meaning communicated, he was the most copious I have listened to. How in few sentences he would sketch you off an entire biography, an entire object or transaction, keen, clear, rugged, genuine, completely rounded In! His words came direct from the heart by the inspiration of the moment.”

Thomas Carlyle

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Communication , Idea , Heart

“With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering.”

Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

“The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. Nobody, or hardly anybody, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind; a Human Doer especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate of all Nature's Facts? Nobody can recognize him: till once he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has been articulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To the worshipper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct from Heaven,—how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfortunate? Not except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent,—which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no great haste to do.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Truth , Books , Age , Soul

“The science of the age, in short, is physical, chemical, physiological; in all shapes mechanical. Our favourite Mathematics, the highly prized exponent of all these other sciences, has also become more and more mechanical. Excellence in what is called its higher departments depends less on natural genius than on acquired expertness in wielding its machinery. Without undervaluing the wonderful results which a Lagrange or Laplace educes by means of it, we may remark, that their calculus, differential and integral, is little else than a more cunningly-constructed arithmetical mill; where the factors, being put in, are, as it were, ground into the true product, under cover, and without other effort on our part than steady turning of the handle. We have more Mathematics than ever; but less Mathesis.”

Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Age , Education , Mathematics , Nature

“Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

World , Light

“Our “Theories of Taste,” as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is “explained,” made mechanically visible, from “Association” and the like, …”

Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Love , Wisdom , Men , Beauty

“Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Secret , Books , History , Sense

“The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Law

“The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,—fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

Life , Fear , Feeling , Nature

“What the Universities have mainly done—what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me. Whatever you may think of all that, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading—to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.”

Thomas Carlyle

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Books , Imagination , Thinking , Learning

“Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!”

Thomas Carlyle

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

World , Way , Soul , Literature

“It can be said of him [Scott], when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time.”

Thomas Carlyle

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Life , Time

“suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, as well as "magic," among that people! It is the greatest invention man has ever made! this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first.”

Thomas Carlyle

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

People