--- title: "Thomas Carlyle Quotes | QuotesBy.net" description: "Thomas Carlyle shares lofty, reflective musings on speech, heroism, and human frailty. Read all 110 quotes by Thomas Carlyle on QuotesBy.net." image: "https://quotesby.net/wp-content/themes/quotesby-editorial/assets/og-default.png" --- ## Thomas Carlyle quotes 1. > Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts. [Permalink to quote \#1](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/1/ "Permalink to quote 1") 2. > It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts. [Permalink to quote \#2](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/2/ "Permalink to quote 2") 3. > The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble. [Permalink to quote \#3](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/3/ "Permalink to quote 3") 4. > A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures. [Permalink to quote \#4](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/4/ "Permalink to quote 4") 5. > Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero. [Permalink to quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") 6. > So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away. [Permalink to quote \#6](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/6/ "Permalink to quote 6") 7. > He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet. [Permalink to quote \#7](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/7/ "Permalink to quote 7") 8. > Here numerous persons, with big wigs many of them, and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal Science, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Premier resolutely beckons them down again [Permalink to quote \#8](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/8/ "Permalink to quote 8") 9. > A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools. [Permalink to quote \#9](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/9/ "Permalink to quote 9") 10. > A healthy hatred of scoundrels. [Permalink to quote \#10](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/10/ "Permalink to quote 10") 11. > 'Genius' (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all). [Permalink to quote \#11](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/11/ "Permalink to quote 11") 12. > Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books! [Permalink to quote \#12](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/12/ "Permalink to quote 12") 13. > This great maxim of Philosophy he had gathered by the teaching of nature alone: That man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream. [Permalink to quote \#13](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/13/ "Permalink to quote 13") 14. > A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. [Permalink to quote \#14](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/14/ "Permalink to quote 14") 15. > The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being. [Permalink to quote \#15](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/15/ "Permalink to quote 15") 16. > The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion. [Permalink to quote \#16](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/16/ "Permalink to quote 16") 17. > Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood. [Permalink to quote \#17](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/17/ "Permalink to quote 17") 18. > In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded. [Permalink to quote \#18](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/18/ "Permalink to quote 18") 19. > A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility. [Permalink to quote \#19](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/19/ "Permalink to quote 19") 20. > Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. [Permalink to quote \#20](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/20/ "Permalink to quote 20") 21. > : with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering : [Permalink to quote \#21](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/21/ "Permalink to quote 21") 22. > Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise! [Permalink to quote \#22](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/22/ "Permalink to quote 22") 23. > Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it. [Permalink to quote \#23](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/23/ "Permalink to quote 23") 24. > The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in? [Permalink to quote \#24](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/24/ "Permalink to quote 24") 25. > All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew. [Permalink to quote \#25](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/25/ "Permalink to quote 25") 26. > The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully. [Permalink to quote \#26](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/26/ "Permalink to quote 26") 27. > There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed. [Permalink to quote \#27](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/27/ "Permalink to quote 27") 28. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#28](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/28/ "Permalink to quote 28") 29. > No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense. [Permalink to quote \#29](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/29/ "Permalink to quote 29") 30. > Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls. [Permalink to quote \#30](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/30/ "Permalink to quote 30") 31. > All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught. [Permalink to quote \#31](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/31/ "Permalink to quote 31") 32. > The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others. [Permalink to quote \#32](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/32/ "Permalink to quote 32") Attribution disputed; shown as originally published. 33. > It can be said of him \[Scott\], when he departed he took a man's life along with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. [Permalink to quote \#33](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/33/ "Permalink to quote 33") 34. > Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die. [Permalink to quote \#34](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/34/ "Permalink to quote 34") 35. > There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done. [Permalink to quote \#35](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/35/ "Permalink to quote 35") 36. > The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book. [Permalink to quote \#36](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/36/ "Permalink to quote 36") 37. > No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. [Permalink to quote \#37](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/37/ "Permalink to quote 37") 38. > He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing. [Permalink to quote \#38](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/38/ "Permalink to quote 38") 39. > Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. [Permalink to quote \#39](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/39/ "Permalink to quote 39") 40. > Be not the slave of Words. [Permalink to quote \#40](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/40/ "Permalink to quote 40") 41. > Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. [Permalink to quote \#41](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/41/ "Permalink to quote 41") 42. > Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe. [Permalink to quote \#42](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/42/ "Permalink to quote 42") 43. > Wonder is the basis of worship. [Permalink to quote \#43](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/43/ "Permalink to quote 43") 44. > What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite. [Permalink to quote \#44](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/44/ "Permalink to quote 44") 45. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#45](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/45/ "Permalink to quote 45") 46. > With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much. [Permalink to quote \#46](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/46/ "Permalink to quote 46") 47. > Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself. [Permalink to quote \#47](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/47/ "Permalink to quote 47") 48. > Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History. [Permalink to quote \#48](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/48/ "Permalink to quote 48") 49. > Love not Pleasure; love God. [Permalink to quote \#49](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/49/ "Permalink to quote 49") 50. > 'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer. [Permalink to quote \#50](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/50/ "Permalink to quote 50") 51. > As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden- 'Speech is silvern, Silence is golden'; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity. [Permalink to quote \#51](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/51/ "Permalink to quote 51") 52. > For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like? [Permalink to quote \#52](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/52/ "Permalink to quote 52") 53. > The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. [Permalink to quote \#53](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/53/ "Permalink to quote 53") 54. > That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy. [Permalink to quote \#54](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/54/ "Permalink to quote 54") 55. > France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams. [Permalink to quote \#55](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/55/ "Permalink to quote 55") 56. > No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, - with the answer, No effects. [Permalink to quote \#56](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/56/ "Permalink to quote 56") 57. > To a shower of gold most things are penetrable. [Permalink to quote \#57](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/57/ "Permalink to quote 57") 58. > 'The people may eat grass': hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable-and will send back tidings. [Permalink to quote \#58](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/58/ "Permalink to quote 58") 59. > A whiff of grapeshot. [Permalink to quote \#59](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/59/ "Permalink to quote 59") 60. > O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other. [Permalink to quote \#60](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/60/ "Permalink to quote 60") 61. > Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. [Permalink to quote \#61](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/61/ "Permalink to quote 61") 62. > History a distillation of rumor. [Permalink to quote \#62](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/62/ "Permalink to quote 62") 63. > The All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do. [Permalink to quote \#63](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/63/ "Permalink to quote 63") 64. > The difference between Orthodoxy or Mydoxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy. [Permalink to quote \#64](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/64/ "Permalink to quote 64") 65. > No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. [Permalink to quote \#65](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/65/ "Permalink to quote 65") 66. > The history of the world is but the biography of great men. [Permalink to quote \#66](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/66/ "Permalink to quote 66") 67. > We must get rid of fear. [Permalink to quote \#67](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/67/ "Permalink to quote 67") 68. > 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. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. [Permalink to quote \#68](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/68/ "Permalink to quote 68") 69. > The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. [Permalink to quote \#69](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/69/ "Permalink to quote 69") 70. > Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one. [Permalink to quote \#70](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/70/ "Permalink to quote 70") 71. > I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last. [Permalink to quote \#71](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/71/ "Permalink to quote 71") 72. > We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, - the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, - has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world? [Permalink to quote \#72](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/72/ "Permalink to quote 72") 73. > Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? 'I am a Public Preacher;' appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly 'a sign to you,' if your eyes were open! [Permalink to quote \#73](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/73/ "Permalink to quote 73") 74. > His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not 'succeed by being an easy religion.' As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, - sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. [Permalink to quote \#74](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/74/ "Permalink to quote 74") 75. > Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, - nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for [Permalink to quote \#75](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/75/ "Permalink to quote 75") 76. > No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to Truth; - 'living in a vain show.' Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. [Permalink to quote \#76](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/76/ "Permalink to quote 76") 77. > Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. [Permalink to quote \#77](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/77/ "Permalink to quote 77") 78. > We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always of the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to good in them; that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what is just and true [Permalink to quote \#78](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/78/ "Permalink to quote 78") 79. > On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian God Wish, the god of all rude men, - this has been enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it not false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily believed. These Arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslem do by theirs, - believing it wholly, fronting Time with it, and Eternity with it. [Permalink to quote \#79](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/79/ "Permalink to quote 79") 80. > To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; - glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. [Permalink to quote \#80](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/80/ "Permalink to quote 80") 81. > The Age of Miracles is forever here! [Permalink to quote \#81](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/81/ "Permalink to quote 81") 82. > In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. [Permalink to quote \#82](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/82/ "Permalink to quote 82") 83. > A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. [Permalink to quote \#83](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/83/ "Permalink to quote 83") 84. > All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. [Permalink to quote \#84](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/84/ "Permalink to quote 84") 85. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#85](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/85/ "Permalink to quote 85") 86. > The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire. [Permalink to quote \#86](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/86/ "Permalink to quote 86") 87. > 'A fair day's wages for a fair day's work': it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man. [Permalink to quote \#87](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/87/ "Permalink to quote 87") 88. > Fire is the best of servents; but what a master! [Permalink to quote \#88](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/88/ "Permalink to quote 88") 89. > All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble...A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god. [Permalink to quote \#89](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/89/ "Permalink to quote 89") 90. > Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things? ...God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul. [Permalink to quote \#90](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/90/ "Permalink to quote 90") 91. > The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them. [Permalink to quote \#91](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/91/ "Permalink to quote 91") 92. > Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns. [Permalink to quote \#92](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/92/ "Permalink to quote 92") 93. > Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. [Permalink to quote \#93](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/93/ "Permalink to quote 93") 94. > He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech. [Permalink to quote \#94](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/94/ "Permalink to quote 94") 95. > Captains of Industry. [Permalink to quote \#95](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/95/ "Permalink to quote 95") 96. > A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. [Permalink to quote \#96](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/96/ "Permalink to quote 96") 97. > A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. It they be not inhabited, what a waste of space. [Permalink to quote \#97](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/97/ "Permalink to quote 97") 98. > Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as he could have written Hamlet. [Permalink to quote \#98](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/98/ "Permalink to quote 98") 99. > No pressure, no diamonds. [Permalink to quote \#99](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/99/ "Permalink to quote 99") 100. > It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four. [Permalink to quote \#100](https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle/100/ "Permalink to quote 100") ## Also attributed 1. > There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out. 2. > Whose school-hours are all the days and nights of our existence. 3. > Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given. 4. > The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. 5. > Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices of great men, so it is likewise reformed by their moderation. 6. > 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. 7. > All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them. 8. > 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. 9. > What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom? 10. > Let Time and Chance combine, combine! Let Time and Chance combine! The fairest love from heaven above, That love of yours was mine, My Dear! That love of yours was mine. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "CollectionPage", "name": "Thomas Carlyle Quotes", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle", "about": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" }, "hasPart": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Here numerous persons, with big wigs many of them, and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal Science, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Premier resolutely beckons them down again", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A healthy hatred of scoundrels.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "'Genius' (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "This great maxim of Philosophy he had gathered by the teaching of nature alone: That man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Carlyle" } } ] } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://quotesby.net/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Authors", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "T", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/t/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Thomas Carlyle", "item": "https://quotesby.net/Thomas-Carlyle" } ] } ```