Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)
Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era.
In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
What is all Knowledge too, but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials.
"Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).
The Age of Miracles is forever here!
A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.
A healthy hatred of scoundrels.
Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.
The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.
A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.
The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
"The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind."
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.