Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlylewas a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 December 1795
A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.
Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.
He that has done nothing has known nothing.
What is nature? Art thou not the living government of God? O Heaven, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee, that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?
At worst, is not this an unjust world, full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-footed or two-footed?
Man is, and was always, a block-head and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider.
Nothing ever happens but once in all this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning.
To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.
The past is always attractive because it is drained of fear.
Love not pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved ...
No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way by natural dimness and selfishness; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis-able.
Feel it in thy heart and then say whether it is of God!
Men worship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship.
Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It is emblematic of all things a man does.