Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Great men are the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain.

Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.

Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

One is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is not evil to be poor.

We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings.

The aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of the money-bag.

Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

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

A person with a clear purpose will make progress, even on the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress, even on the smoothest road.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature.

That a Parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business: and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

Habit is the deepest law of human nature

Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?