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
Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half belief and untruth that make it.
History is the distillation of rumour.
Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is alone noble.
There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!
The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against disbelief
Love is ever the beginning of knowledge as fire is of light.
Literature is the thought of thinking souls.
Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.
Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.
The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of water, is real knowledge, a real possession and acquirement.
It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.