Thomas Carlyle Quotes

For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like?

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden— "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden"; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.

Love not Pleasure; love God.

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

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.

Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.

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

Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Be not the slave of Words.

Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.