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Thomas Carlyle

70 quotes

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher who became one of the most influential social commentators of the Victorian era. Known for his passionate writing style and moral seriousness, Carlyle wrote extensively on history, heroism, and the human condition.

“History, a distillation of rumour.”

— Thomas Carlyle

History

All Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

“To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Men

“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.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“All great peoples are conservative.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Music

“In books lies the soul of the whole past time.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Time

“Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Humor

“True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Humor

“Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Men

“Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Work

“Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“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.”

— Thomas Carlyle

God

“He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Fitness

“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 the age of twenty-five.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Age

“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.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Death

“I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.”

— Thomas Carlyle

God

“A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Hope

“Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great