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
Let me have my own way exactly in everything, and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist
The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Love is not altogether a , yet it has many points in common therewith
The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it.
A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then.
For the ''superior morality,'' of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this ''superior morality'' is properly rather an ''inferior criminality,'' produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!
Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated reading deserves to be read at all.
If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
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.
Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.