Thomas Carlyle
Scottish essayist and historian, 1795-1881
95 quotes.
Quotes by Thomas Carlyle
- The eternal stars shine out again, as soon as it is dark enough.
- The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
- The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
- 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!
- The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder and worship, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.
- The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.
- The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
- There is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. In idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
- This is such a serious world that we should never speak at all unless we have something to say.
- To redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee. Solely over one man therein thou hast quite absolute control. Him redeem, him make honest.
- 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 the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
- Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind — honest work, which you intend getting done.
- Every noble work is at first impossible.