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Thomas Carlyle
412 quotes
“[I am] fast becoming a patriot of the most decided stamp. Scornfully as I used to speak and think of Scotland in my hours of bitterness and irritation, I never fail to stand up manfully in defence of it thro' thick and thin, whenever a renegade Scot takes upon him to abuse it.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Murray (24 August 1824), quoted in Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (1983), p. 100
“Not all his men may sever this, It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls; My whinstone house my castle is— I have my own four walls.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Own Four Walls” (c. 1825) {{cite book
“The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an examination of his works (1825).
“Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notebooks (1830).
“It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to His Wife (1835).
“The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal (1835).
“I know not whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do, as is likeliest; but this I could tell the world: You have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man. Do what you like with it, you—.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1834 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to his wife after he had finished writing The French Revolution (12 January 1837), quoted in James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834–1881, Vol. I (1884), p. 84
“So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1840 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Today (1840).
“He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845).
“Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Life of Fredrick the Great, Bk. IV, ch. 3 (1858–1865). Sometimes misreported as "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains"; see Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Mis…
“Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No nation ever had so bad a neighbour as Germany has had in France for the last 400 years; bad in all manner of ways; insolent, rapacious, insatiable, unappeasable, continually aggressive. ... Germany, after 400 years of ill-usage, and generally ill-fortune, from that neighbour, has had at last the great happiness to see its enemy fairly down in this manner; and Germany, I do clearly believe, would be a foolish nation not to think of raising up some secure boundary-fence between herself and such a neighbour now that she has the chance.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to The Times on the Franco-Prussian War and Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine (18 November 1870), p. 8
“The unspeakable Turk”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A phrase which came into common use after a letter by Carlyle on the Balkan crisis of 1875-76:
“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 (1795–1881) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reminiscences (1881), referring to his father, James Carlyle.
“A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.
“For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Carlyle, Essays, Death of Goethe. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
“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 (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Carlyle, Essays, On History. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
“A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richter (1827).
“Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,—imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics, — "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of—the air!”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The State of German Literature (1827).
“Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Goethe, (1828).
“In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Goethe (1828).
“Clever men are good, but they are not the best.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Burns (1828).
“How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His religion at best is an anxious wish, — like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Voltaire, Foreign Review, (1829)
“There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dr. Francia (1845).
“The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is ever the beginning of Knowledge as fire is of light.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, — Necessity and Free Will.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Again, and again, we say, the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Opera (1852).
“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 (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instruction, that mysterious communing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an indefinable tentative process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation of means and methods, to attain the same end; but a secure, universal, straightforward business, to be conducted in the gross, by proper mechanism.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do; they can nowise proceed at once and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery, they were hopeless, helpless.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have the greatest admiration for this learned doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering; like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, imposing Vauxhall, whose fire-works, cascades and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy and believe in,—but where he finds nothing real but the saltpetre, pasteboard and catgut.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Civil government does by its nature include much that is mechanical, and must be treated accordingly. We term it indeed, in ordinary language, the Machine of Society, and talk of it as the grand working wheel from which all private machines must derive, or to which they must adapt, their movements.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source