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Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle Quotes

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Famous Thomas Carlyle Quotes

“When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar!”

MenFirstsLooksLittlesHas BeensStillsEyeYoungCoursesStarsSpaceClearRecordsGenerationsTearsRemainsShiningSilentPitySereneShepherdsNoisySiriusOrion
Author:Thomas Carlyle
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“Superstition! that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, with all its racks, and poison chalices, and foul sleeping draughts, is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there and will reappear.”

MayLittlesLightStarsSleepDarknessSkyReturnPassingPassingsBurningPoisonSuperstitionsFoulPassing AwayStrawsRacksDraughtChaliceIncubusShunning
Book:The Carlyle Anthology
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“Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.”

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Book:Critical and miscellaneous essays, collected and republ
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“Produce, produce! Were it but the pitifulest, infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name. 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee? Out with it then! Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might.”

WholeHandsMightNamesProduceProductsTheeFractions
Book:On heroes, hero-worship, & the heroic in history: six lectures ; reported, with emendations and additions
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“This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”

SoulCharacterAgeMoralPureSkillsDignityManagementCharacteristicsMechanismInferiorsNineteenth CenturyCivilised
Book:Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: By Thomas Carlyle
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“They have their belief, these poor Tibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, a belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds. This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the "discoverability" is the only error here.”

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Author:Thomas Carlyle
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“So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth.”

StillsFormSpiritNationsPoorDivineHeroAncientRevelationsPaganismPaganObsolete
Book:Heroes and Hero Worship: The Historian
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