Thomas Carlyle

• "Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.“
• "It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.“
• "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.“
• "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.“
• "Work alone is noble.“
• "Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.“
• "Clever men are good, but they are not the best.“
• "Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.“
• "The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.“
• "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.“
• "The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.“
• "Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.“
• "Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.“
• "The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.“
• "He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.“
• "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.“
• "I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.“
• "There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.“
• "The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.“
• "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.“
• "The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.“
• "Clever men are good, but they are not the best.“
• "For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.“
• "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.“
• "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.“
• "What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.“
• "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?“
• "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.“
• "I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.“
• "The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.“
• "No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.“
• "The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.“
• "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.“
• "I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.“
• "The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.“
• "All great peoples are conservative.“
• "There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.“
• "History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.“
• "No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.“
• "I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.“
• "It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.“
• "The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.“
• "He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.“
• "No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.“
• "History, a distillation of rumour.“
• "History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.“
• "A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.“
• "He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.“
• "It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.“
• "Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.“
• "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.“
• "Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.“
• "Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.“
• "A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.“
• "A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.“
• "Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.“
• "No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.“
• "Clever men are good, but they are not the best.“
• "Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.“
• "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.“
• "The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.“
• "It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.“
• "Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.“
• "There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.“
• "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.“
• "No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.“
• "If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.“
• "Music is well said to be the speech of angels.“
• "Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.“
• "If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.“
• "Endurance is patience concentrated.“
• "It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.“
• "The eye sees what it brings the power to see.“
• "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.“
• "Wonder is the basis of worship.“
• "The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.“
• "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.“
• "Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.“
• "This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.“
• "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.“
• "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.“
• "Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.“
• "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.“
• "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.“
• "Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.“
• "Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.“
• "In books lies the soul of the whole past time.“
• "If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?“
• "Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.“
• "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?“
• "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.“
• "I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.“
• "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.“
• "Every noble work is at first impossible.“
• "Work alone is noble.“
• "Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.“
• "Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.“
• "A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.“
• "Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.“
• "The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.“
• "Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.“
• "The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.“

Other authors you might be
interested in

Herbert Hoover

Isaac Asimov

Max de Pree

J. Paul Getty

Charles Kettering

Edgar R. Fiedler

Arnold H. Glasow

Howard Aiken

Thomas J. Watson




Browse all authors