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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.

“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Government

All Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“History, a distillation of rumour.”

— Thomas Carlyle

History

“Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Business

“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

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Business

“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Knowledge

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

— Thomas Carlyle

War

“Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Work

“The eye sees what it brings the power to see.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Power

“A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Work

“For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Good

“If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Men

“Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Faith

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Humor

“Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Hope

“Every noble work is at first impossible.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Work

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“All great peoples are conservative.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Great

“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Government

“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