Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

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

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

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.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

The ghostly consciousness of wrong.

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

Sarcasm is the language of the devil, for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

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

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

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

The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

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

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.