Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)
Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era.
"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
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.
We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
The Press is the Fourth Estate of the realm.
To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.
The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
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.
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."
A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.
I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.
"The people may eat grass": hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable—and will send back tidings.
For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like?
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!
Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?
No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer, No effects.