Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

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

He who has no vision of eternity has no hold on time.

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.

In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception.

And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.

That monstrous tuberosity of civilised life, the capital of England.

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

Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

The leafy blossoming present time springs from the whole past, remembered and unrememberable.

Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.

Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.

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

Naps are a way of traveling painlessly through time into the future.