“Wonder is the basis of worship.”
Source: The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle
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Famous Thomas Carlyle Quotes
“All great peoples are conservative.”
Source: Past and Present: The Historian
“Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle
“If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?”
Source: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished
“One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.”
“Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.”
Source: Carlyle Reader
“Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle
“The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.”
Source: The Sayings of Thomas Carlyle
“Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.”
Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle
Source: Reminiscences
“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”
“Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.”
“Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.”
“The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.”
“The true university of these days is a collection of books.”
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill & on Liberty; Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh & Sir Walter Scott
Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle
“Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle: Critical and miscellaneous essays
“Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.”
Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle
“Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.”
“Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle
“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.”
Source: Past and Present
“Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.”
Source: Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books
“Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.”
“Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.”
Source: The Carlyle reader, selections ed. by J. Wood
“The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle
“The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
“Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.”
Source: Carlyle Reader
Source: Carlyle's Works ...
Source: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays