Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Quotes

• Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

• Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

• The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.

• All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

• Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

• France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.

• If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

• The true university of these days is a collection of books.

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

• What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

• Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

• That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

• The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

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

• If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.

• A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.

• When the oak is felled the forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown silently by an unnoticed breeze.

• Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.