The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slopshirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.

— Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle Quotes

If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare’s intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of.

— Thomas Carlyle

A word spoken in season, at the right moment; is the mother of ages.

— Thomas Carlyle

Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world’s Priest; – guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired armies and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of printing.

— Thomas Carlyle

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

— Thomas Carlyle

Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.

— Thomas Carlyle

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of virtuous living.

— Thomas Carlyle

Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?

— Thomas Carlyle

Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.

— Thomas Carlyle

Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of – the air!

— Thomas Carlyle

We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.

— Thomas Carlyle

Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

— Thomas Carlyle

The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.

— Thomas Carlyle

Romance

Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on.

— Thomas Carlyle

Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.

— Thomas Carlyle

Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.

— Thomas Carlyle

High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge.

— Thomas Carlyle

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