Famous Quotes by Thomas Carlyle (212 Quotations)

The true past departs not, no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.

Thomas Carlyle – [Change]

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Thomas Carlyle – [Libraries]

The whole past is the procession of the present.

Thomas Carlyle – [History and Historians]

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Thomas Carlyle – [Mediocrity]

There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

Thomas Carlyle – [Debt]

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 – [Literature]

There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.

Thomas Carlyle – [Proverbs]

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Thomas Carlyle – [Thoughts and Thinking]

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, –till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Thomas Carlyle – [Thoughts and Thinking]

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 – [Reform]

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 – [Faith]

Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.

Thomas Carlyle – [Change]

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]

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 – [Silence]

Variety is the condition of harmony.

Thomas Carlyle – [Variety]

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.

Thomas Carlyle – [Virtue]

We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ''fair competition'' and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.

Thomas Carlyle – [Society]

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall — which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Thomas Carlyle – [Literary Criticism]

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

Thomas Carlyle – [Present]

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

Thomas Carlyle – [Eyes]