Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Time has only a relative existence.

Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.

Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.

Wealth has more and more increased, and at the same time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor.

O Time! Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing!

In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion.

What unknown seas of feeling lie in man, and will from time to time break through!

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

Worship is transcendent wonder.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.

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

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

All human souls, never so bedarkened, love light; light once kindled spreads till all is luminous.

The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common therewith."

We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness.

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.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.

Man's earthly interests,'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes.