Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

About Thomas Carlyle:

Thomas Carlyle is nothing but the biography of the Great Man".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

Thomas Carlyle

You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt against...

Thomas Carlyle

There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!

Thomas Carlyle

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.

Thomas Carlyle

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

Thomas Carlyle

It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious,...

Thomas Carlyle

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

Thomas Carlyle

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

Thomas Carlyle

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 th...

Thomas Carlyle

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Thomas Carlyle

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books.

Thomas Carlyle

Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men tall.

Thomas Carlyle

Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the v...

Thomas Carlyle

Well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.

Thomas Carlyle

Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked & coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly royal as the Scepter of this Planet. Hardly entreated Brother! For us was thy way so bent, for us were thy straight limb & fingers so defor...

Thomas Carlyle

A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes.

Thomas Carlyle

Fool! The Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou t...

Thomas Carlyle

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness! They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-demand principle; they will not; nor ought they, nor can they...

Thomas Carlyle

Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hither-ward from the gray Dawn of Time! Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of Difficulties Conquered. Difficult? You must try this...

Thomas Carlyle

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

Thomas Carlyle

Author Bio

  • NameThomas Carlyle
  • DescriptionScottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
  • BornDecember 4, 1795
  • DiedFebruary 4, 1881
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionLinguist; Literary Historian; Historian; Translator; Mathematician; Philosopher; Essayist; Writer
  • WorksSartor Resartus; On Heroes, Hero-Worship, And The Heroic In History
  • AwardsOrder Of Merit For Arts And Science