Quotes & anectdotes from
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the foolish,
the courageous &
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Thomas Carlyle Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Born: Dec 4, 1795
  • Died: Feb 5, 1881

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the Great Man".

He was a very respected historian and his book The French Revolution: A History remains popular nowadays and it was the inspiration for Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is considered one of the finest works of the 19th century.

A great polemicist, he called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia and his Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question remains controversial. Once a Christian, he lost his faith while attending the University of Edinburgh, embracing later a form of Deism.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

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.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

All great peoples are conservative.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

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.

If you look deep enough you will see music the heart of nature being everywhere music.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

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.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Work alone is noble.