Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged, all-nourishing earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much more her darling man?

Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.

What are your historical Facts still more your biographical Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts

Is man's civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?

Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to "get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted 'on him".

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?

In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.

A man--be the heavens ever praised!--is sufficient for himself.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.

No man is born without ambitious worldly desires.

It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.

Money will buy money's worth; but the thing men call fame, what is it?

Not one false man but doth uncountable evil.

The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic.

The king is the man who can.

Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor.

With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much.

Whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,to the length of sixpence.

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.

God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffin man's bell.

Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious.

Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.