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
The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
In a certain sense all men are historians.
One of the Godlike things of this world is the veneration done to human worth by the hearts of men.
History is the new poetry.
Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form is a wrapping of traditions, hearsay's, and mere words.
A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by?...
When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!...
As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him I justly can...
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another; nor could it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.
Speech is great, but silence is greater.
For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy.