Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

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

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.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.

If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.

A man lives by believing something.

The purpose of man is in action not thought.

Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable.

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

Man makes circumstances, and spiritually as well as economically, is the artificer of his own fortune.

Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.

Neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident.

Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

For every one hundred men who can stand adversity there is only one who can withstand prosperity.

Infinite is the help man can yield to man.

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

Evil and good are everywhere, like shadow and substance; inseparable (for men) yet not hostile, only opposed.

Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion;' men that can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine.

If there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable and doomed to ruin.