Quotes from Thomas Carlyle

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.

No country can find eternal peace and comfort where the vote of Judas Iscariot is as good as the vote of the Saviour of mankind.

Before philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded.

There is but one temple in this Universe: The Body. We speak to God whenever we lay our hands upon it.

Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.

History is philosophy teaching by experience.

The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire.

History is the new poetry.

History after all is the true poetry.

Poetry therefore we will call Musical Thought.

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

Every noble work is at first impossible.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Today is not yesterday how can our works and thoughts if they are always to be the fittest continue always the same? Change indeed is painful yet ever needful.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do that with all thy might and leave the issues calmly to God.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.