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
Woe to him, . . . who has no court of appeal against the world's judgment.
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.
Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.
The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.
There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.
A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man.
A man--be the heavens ever praised!--is sufficient for himself.
All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.
All work of man is as the swimmer's: a vast ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word.
Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.
We arc the miracle of miracles, the great inscrutable mystery of God.
Man is a tool-using animal.
Macaulay is well for awhile, but one wouldn't live under Niagara.
Caution is the lower story of prudence.