Thomas Carlyle Quotes
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351. “What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.”

— Thomas Carlyle

352. “The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life.”

— Thomas Carlyle

353. “The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.”

— Thomas Carlyle

354. “Infinite is the help man can yield to man.”

— Thomas Carlyle

355. “Good Christian people, here lies for you an inestimable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness, employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.”

— Thomas Carlyle

356. “France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.”

— Thomas Carlyle

357. “Fancy that thou deservest to be hangedthou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged ina hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.”

— Thomas Carlyle

358. “Violence does even justice unjustly.”

— Thomas Carlyle

359. “Armed Soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God’s judgement on the Enemies of God. It is a phenomenon not of joyful nature; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe.”

— Thomas Carlyle

360. “Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.”

— Thomas Carlyle

361. “The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.”

— Thomas Carlyle

362. “The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.”

— Thomas Carlyle

363. “Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.”

— Thomas Carlyle

364. “What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?”

— Thomas Carlyle

365. “War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.”

— Thomas Carlyle

366. “Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some spiritual hero.”

— Thomas Carlyle

367. “If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.”

— Thomas Carlyle

368. “We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one.”

— Thomas Carlyle

369. “Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on.”

— Thomas Carlyle

370. “I had a lifelong quarrel with God, but in the end we made up.”

— Thomas Carlyle

371. “Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.”

— Thomas Carlyle

372. “Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.”

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

374. “Let him who wants to move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.”

— Thomas Carlyle

375. “Rare benevolence, the minister of God.”

— Thomas Carlyle

376. “Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.”

— Thomas Carlyle

377. “The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.”

— Thomas Carlyle

378. “A word spoken in season, at the right moment; is the mother of ages.”

— Thomas Carlyle

379. “Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists. It is in reality no longer expected or recognized as a virtue among men.”

— Thomas Carlyle

380. “The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature’s own heart – all else is wind in comparison.”

— Thomas Carlyle

381. “The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.”

— Thomas Carlyle

382. “A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.”

— Thomas Carlyle

383. “No conquest can ever become permanent which does not show itself beneficial to the conquered as well as to the conquerors.”

— Thomas Carlyle

384. “Just in ratio as knowledge increases, faith diminishes.”

— Thomas Carlyle

385. “Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.”

— Thomas Carlyle

386. “No age seemed the age of romance to itself.”

— Thomas Carlyle

387. “Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers.”

— Thomas Carlyle

388. “It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.”

— Thomas Carlyle

389. “Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.”

— Thomas Carlyle

390. “Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.”

— Thomas Carlyle

391. “Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.”

— Thomas Carlyle

392. “One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.”

— Thomas Carlyle

393. “Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.”

— Thomas Carlyle

394. “No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.”

— Thomas Carlyle

395. “Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film.”

— Thomas Carlyle

396. “A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.”

— Thomas Carlyle

397. “For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.”

— Thomas Carlyle

398. “It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.”

— Thomas Carlyle

399. “A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.”

— Thomas Carlyle

400. “Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.”

— Thomas Carlyle