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 end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.
Government is emphatically a machine: to the discontented a taxing machine, to the contented a machine for securing property.
The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far-distant, long-forgotten home.
I have no patience whatever with these gorilla damnifications of humanity.
No violent extreme endures.
Necessity dispenseth with decorum.
A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
All great peoples are conservative.
With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much.
Might and right do differ frightfully from hour to hour, but then centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.
The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by, Was-Heavens!-was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!
The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.