1 – The true university of these days is a collection of books. – Thomas Carlyle
2 – 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. – Thomas Carlyle
3 – Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. – Thomas Carlyle
4 – A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun. – Thomas Carlyle
5 – 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. – Thomas Carlyle
6 – Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools, he is nothing, with tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle
7 – A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he does it in a devout manner. – Thomas Carlyle
8 – History, a distillation of rumour. – Thomas Carlyle
9 – No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. – Thomas Carlyle
10 – 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. – Thomas Carlyle
11 – 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
12 – 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
13 – If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt. – Thomas Carlyle
14 – It is the heart always that sees before the head can see. – Thomas Carlyle
15 – War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle. – Thomas Carlyle
16 – Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation. – Thomas Carlyle
17 – Work alone is noble. – Thomas Carlyle
18 – Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die. – Thomas Carlyle
19 – All great peoples are conservative. – Thomas Carlyle
20 – I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it. – Thomas Carlyle
21 – Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. – Thomas Carlyle
22 – This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. – Thomas Carlyle
23 – Thought is the parent of the deed. – Thomas Carlyle
24 – The spiritual is the parent of the practical. – Thomas Carlyle
25 – Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time. – Thomas Carlyle
26 – Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong. – Thomas Carlyle
27 – It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics. – Thomas Carlyle
28 – Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin forever on their axis, advancing nowhere. – Thomas Carlyle
29 – Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. – Thomas Carlyle
30 – Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. – Thomas Carlyle
31 – There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write. – Thomas Carlyle
32 – It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale. – Thomas Carlyle
33 – Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding. – Thomas Carlyle
34 – The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then. – Thomas Carlyle
35 – Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. – Thomas Carlyle
36 – No violent extreme endures. – Thomas Carlyle
37 – The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done. – Thomas Carlyle
38 – Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer. – Thomas Carlyle
39 – The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself. – Thomas Carlyle
40 – Clever men are good, but they are not the best. – Thomas Carlyle
41 – The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion. – Thomas Carlyle
42 – Oh, give us the man who sings at his work. – Thomas Carlyle
43 – The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest. – Thomas Carlyle
44 – Narrative is linear, but the action has breadth and depth as well as the height and is solid. – Thomas Carlyle
45 – Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do. – Thomas Carlyle
46 – Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone. – Thomas Carlyle
47 – I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am. – Thomas Carlyle
48 – All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. – Thomas Carlyle
49 – No person is important enough to make me angry. – Thomas Carlyle
50 – The eye sees what it brings the power to see. – Thomas Carlyle
