Thomas Carlyle Quotes - Famous Quotes by Thomas Carlyle
Born: 1795-12-04
Died: 1881-02-05
Thomas Carlyle Biography
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
- Thomas Carlyle
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A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose, if there be even a little worthiness in it. The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
- Thomas Carlyle
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A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
- Thomas Carlyle
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A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.
- Thomas Carlyle
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A well written life is almost as rare as a well spent one.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
- Thomas Carlyle
More quotations on: [ Business ] ***
Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Enjoy things which are pleasant that is not the evil it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Every noble work is at first impossible.
- Thomas Carlyle
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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.
- Thomas Carlyle
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France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Happy the people whose annals are blank in the history books
- Thomas Carlyle
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I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
- Thomas Carlyle
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If Jesus Christ were to come today people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
- Thomas Carlyle
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If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
- Thomas Carlyle
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In idleness there is a perpetual despair.
- Thomas Carlyle
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It is not a lucky word, this name "impossible"; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
- Thomas Carlyle
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It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May but at length the season of summer does come.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
- Thomas Carlyle
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No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
- Thomas Carlyle
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No sadder proof can be given by man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
- Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, 1840
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Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
- Thomas Carlyle
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One life - a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Silence is deep as Eternity speech is shallow as Time.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead therefore we must learn both arts.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.
- Thomas Carlyle
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That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
- Thomas Carlyle
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The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
- Thomas Carlyle
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The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
- Thomas Carlyle
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The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
- Thomas Carlyle
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The true university of these days is a collection of books.
- Thomas Carlyle
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The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
- Thomas Carlyle
More quotations on: [ Business ] ***
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
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True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laugther, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
- Thomas Carlyle
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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
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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.
- Thomas Carlyle
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When words leave off, music begins.
- Thomas Carlyle
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