Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Goodness and truth achieved in the past endure forever and do not vanish.
In plain terms
The good things and truths created in history live on and never die.
What can you take from it?
Your positive contributions outlast your lifetime.

Where it applies

  • legacy planning
  • historical study
  • moral choices

Putting it to work

  • create lasting value
  • uphold truth

Questions to consider

  • What good work do you want to last?
  • Does history truly remember virtue?

Another view

Some truths or goods can be forgotten or lost over time.

More from Thomas Carlyle

  1. 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 ce…

    Permalink to quote #33
  2. There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.

    Permalink to quote #35
  3. 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 le…

    Permalink to quote #32

Related quotes

  1. Time, which is the author of authors.

    Francis BaconFrancis Bacon quote #15
  2. Time is the only critic without ambition.

    John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck quote #66
  3. Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.

    Mahatma GandhiMahatma Gandhi quote #234