Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Man is a tool-using animal.

Here hath been dawning another blue day: think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?

Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite and lets us for moments gaze into that!

Burke said there were three Estates in Parliament; but in the reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important than them all.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of him.

All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path ... a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do ... to find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

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

Silence is deep as Eternity; speech, shallow as Time.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

Every noble crown is, and on earth will ever be, a crown of thorns.

Speech is silvern, silence is golden.

The present is the living sum-total of the whole past.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Give me a man who sings at his work.

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

Not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward.

A battle is a terrible conjugation of the verb to kill: I kill, thou killest, he kills, we kill, they kill, all kill.

Parties on the back of Parties, at war with the world and with each other.