Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlylewas a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 December 1795
All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero, -- the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.
Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown . . . Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men.
A man should be encouraged to do what the Maker of him has intended by the making of him, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that purpose.
Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.
There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong.
The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice.
This little life has its duties that are great-that are alone great, and that go up to heaven and down to hell.
Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all of these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous.
Courtesy is the due of man to man; not of suit-of-clothes to suit-of-clothes.
A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.
Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.
He that has done nothing has known nothing.
What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?
At worst, is not this an unjust world, full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-footed or two-footed?