Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

We called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakespeare the still more melodious Priest of a true Catholicism, the 'Universal Church' of the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can!

As good Archbishop Loménie was wont to say: 'There are so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us.'—How many to destroy us?

Thought will not work except in silence.

for is not every meanest Day "the conflux of two Eternities!

Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such!

to be weak is not so miserable; but to be weaker than our task.

Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last.

What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!

One pleasing trait of his character must not be overlooked. He superintended the formation of a subscription library in the parish, and took the whole management of it upon himself. These institutions, though common now, were not so short at the period of which we write; and it should never be forgotten that Burns was amongst the first, if not the very first, of their founders in the rural districts of southern Scotland.

To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky.

Man is without Duty round him; except it be "to make the Constitution." He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.

Nay is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?

Resist the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous, yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with Twenty-five Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.

Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand.

Mercury descended in vain; now has the time come for Mars.

Ceea ce devenim depinde in mare masura de ce citim.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

He lingered until the 21st of July, 1796, when he expired. The interest which the death of Burns excited was intense. All differences were forgotten; his genius only was thought of. On the 26th of the same month he was conveyed to the grave, followed by about ten thousand individuals of all ranks, many of whom had come from distant parts of the country to witness the solemnity. He was interred with military honors by the Dumfries volunteers, to which body he had belonged.

on les pendit, they hanged them." Brief is the word; not without significance, be it true or untrue!

O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other; this fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan has his place in all hearts!

Economics is not a gay science. It is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.

new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth.

Tell a man that he is brave, and you help him become so.

The block of granite which is an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.