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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.

“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.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Teacher

All Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

“The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Courage

“There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“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

“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

“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.”

— Thomas Carlyle

War

“The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Happiness

“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Imagination

“History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Science

“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

“History, a distillation of rumour.”

— Thomas Carlyle

History

“The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“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

“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Science

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Men

“The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Business