Famous Quotes by Thomas Carlyle
Below are famous quotes by Thomas Carlyle - Scottish author, essayist, & historian (1795 - 1881).
A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.
Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
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.
France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.
Happy are the people whose annals are blank in history books
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.
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.
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.
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
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.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
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.
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.
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.
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.
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.
When words leave off, music begins.
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