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Soul Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

39 Soul quotes by Thomas Carlyle

All Soul quotes Thomas Carlyle’s page

Thomas Carlyle says every human thing needs an ideal, a soul that gives it meaning. He warns that skepticism can waste the soul like a disease, and he insists that no outside force can force belief. He also calls intellect the immortal part of a person.

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A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

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Literature is the thought of thinking souls.

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Every man has a coward and hero in his soul.

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

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In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

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The great soul of this world is just.

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The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

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The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love.

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

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Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

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Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.

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Skepticism . . . is not intellectual only it is moral also, a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul.

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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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No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

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How, without clothes, could we possess the master organ, soul's seat and true pineal gland of the body social--I mean a purse?

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All human souls, never so bedarkened, love light; light once kindled spreads till all is luminous.

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The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a…

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Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes…

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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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In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material…

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Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires,…

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Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong…

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The authentic insight and experience of any human soul, were it but insight and experience in hewing of wood and drawing of…

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The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and…

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But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon…

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Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A…

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When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas…

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A dandy is a clothes-wearing man--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his…

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This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that…

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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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Does it ever give thee pause that men used to have a soul? Not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of…

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Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness! They will…

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In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.

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There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin;…

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Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man.

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Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too,…

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The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and…

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Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear,…

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All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life,…

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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.