A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby.... The man is now a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Past and Present
Thought once awakened does not again slumber.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Heroes and Hero Worship
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, Heroes and Hero Worship
What an enormous camera-obscura magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it; and in the darkness, in the entire ignorance, without date or document, no book, no Arundel marble, only here and there some dumb monumental cairn!
THOMAS CARLYLE, "Lectures on Heroes", Sartor Resartus
The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.
THOMAS CARLYLE, The French Revolution: A History
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.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.
THOMAS CARLYLE, attributed, 1001 Pearls of Wisdom to Build Confidence: Advice and Guidance to Inspire
Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls.
THOMAS CARLYLE, On Heroes, Hero-worship, & the Heroic in History: Six Lectures
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.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Essays
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Essays
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
THOMAS CARLYLE, On Heroes, Hero-worship, & the Heroic in History: Six Lectures
Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin.
THOMAS CARLYLE, "The Hero as Prophet", Sartor Resartus
When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man; thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more.
THOMAS CARLYLE, attributed, The Ladies Companion, 1853
Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: a succession of falls? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onwards; now falled, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards.
THOMAS CARLYLE, "The Hero as Prophet", Sartor Resartus
Every noble work is at first impossible.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Chartism: Past and Present
Fate is like the oculist, who, when about to open to a blind eye the world of light, first bandages and darkens the other eye that sees.
THOMAS CARLYLE, The Works of Thomas Carlyle
Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays
A laugh to be joyous must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness there can be no true joy.
