Quotes By Thomas Carlyle

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

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

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.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

No pressure, no diamonds.

The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Work alone is noble.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.

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

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

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

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

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

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

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.

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

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.