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 new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
Habit and imitation--there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice, and all learning, in this world.
The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.
The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose. ... Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is. ... Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.
Experience takes dreadfully high school-wages, but he teaches like no other.
The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.
One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore!
The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb,-for we have no word to speak about it.
They only are wise who know that they know nothing.