Thomas Carlyle
127 quotations
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.
If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
The spiritual is the parent of the practical.
No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.
If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.
For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.
Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.
Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.
Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.
The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against unbelief.
The most fearful unbelief is unbelief in your self.
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.
Thought is the parent of the deed.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated reading deserves to be read at all.