Thomas Carlyle Quotes

The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.

[F]riend!—Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men tall.

Nature admits no lie.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

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

[G]rave talk and grave humor with the doers of the craft. Building, walling, is an operation that beyond most other manual ones requires incessant consideration — even new invention. I have heard good judges say that he excelled in it all persons they had seen.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.

It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,—a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,—the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,—the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be.

Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat.

If Governments neglect to invite what noble intellect there is, then too surely all intellect, not omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to become beaverish ignoble intellect; and quitting high aims, which seem shut up from it, will help itself forward in the way of making money and such like; or will even sink to be sham intellect, helping itself by methods which are not only beaverish but vulpine, and so "ignoble" as not to have common honesty.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

وأي دليل أشهر ببراءة الإسلام من الميل إلى الملاذ من شهر رمضان تلجم فيه الشهوات، وتزجر النفس عن غاياتها، وتقرع عن مآربها؟
وهذا هو منتهى العقل والحزم. فإن مباشرة اللذات ليس بالمنكر. وإنما المنكر هو أن تذل النفس لجبار الشهوات، وتنقاد لحادى الأوطار والرغبات.
ولعل أمجد الخصال وأشرف المكارم هو أن يكون للمرء من نفسه على نفسه سلطان، وأن يجعل من لذاته لا سلاسل وأغلالا تعيبه وتعتاص عليه إذا هم أن يصدعها، بل حُلِيًّا وزخارف متى شاء فلا أهون عليه من خلعها، ولا أسهل من نزعها.
وكذلك أمر رمضان سواء كان مقصودا من محمد معينًا، أو كان وحي الغريزة وإلهامًا فطريًّا فهو والله نعم الأمر