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Men Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

224 Men quotes by Thomas Carlyle

All Men quotes Thomas Carlyle’s page

Thomas Carlyle says a man shows his smallness when he doubts great people. He believes work is a man's true ornament and that finding what fits his nature is essential. He also reminds us that facing fear and respecting higher ideas are part of a man's duty.

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Every man has a coward and hero in his soul.

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A man lives by believing something.

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The Highest Being reveals himself in man.

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Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature.

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Not one false man but doth uncountable evil.

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A man perfects himself by working.

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

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Infinite is the help man can yield to man.

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Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.

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There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.

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God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks.

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That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

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Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

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Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable.

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Money will buy money's worth; but the thing men call fame, what is it?

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It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.

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For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.

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It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in…

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Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of…

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Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to…

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Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right; he will grow daily more and more right. It is at bottom the…

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Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the…

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A fair day's wage for a fair day's work": it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing.…

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The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it…

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Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many…

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Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a Life-purpose... Get your…

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Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule;…

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Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself…

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No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards…

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Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into…

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A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold…

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No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it…

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Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his…

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A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road; a man with a…

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With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise.…

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It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a…

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The errors of a wise man are literally more instructive than the truths of a fool. The wise man travels in lofty,…

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Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no…

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I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing…

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Poverty, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which if they do mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe…

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More by Thomas Carlyle

O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create,…

Whose school-hours are all the days and nights of our existence.

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

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of…

The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.

Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices…

The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession;…

All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them.

Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest…

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?

Let Time and Chance combine, combine! Let Time and Chance combine! The fairest love from heaven above, That love of yours was mine, My…

Thought will not work except in silence.

The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble.

Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?

The press is the fourth estate of the realm.