Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him.

— Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos.

— Thomas Carlyle

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh precipitated through “a shivered Universe” in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow out his brains.

— Thomas Carlyle

How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens.

— Thomas Carlyle

Know thyself’: long enough has that poor ‘self’ of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to ‘know’ it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this knowing of thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.

— Thomas Carlyle

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him.

— Thomas Carlyle

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable.

— Thomas Carlyle

It is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly.

— Thomas Carlyle

The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it.

— 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!

— Thomas Carlyle

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!

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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!

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

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?

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat.

— Thomas Carlyle

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!

— Thomas Carlyle
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