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
When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility.
It is not a lucky word, this name ''impossible''; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
Let me have my own way exactly in everything, and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist
If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.
For the ''superior morality,'' of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this ''superior morality'' is properly rather an ''inferior criminality,'' produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated reading deserves to be read at all.
If the cut of the costume indicates intellect and talent, then the color indicates temper and heart.
It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.
Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
Wonderful ''Force of Public Opinion!'' We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of ''influence'' it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?