Quotes By Thomas Carlyle

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

No violent extreme endures.

Be not a slave of words.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.