Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Captains of Industry.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Johnsons are rare; yet, Boswells are perhaps still rarer.

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

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The Everlasting No.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

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.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.

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

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time.

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