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
A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him.
We are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal.
The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.
The meaning of song goes deep. Who in logical words can explain the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into that!
The person who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.
A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.
He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.
A thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such an one announces himself, I doubt not there runs a shudder through the nether empire; and new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap and hoodwink and handcuff him.
Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day?
Fire is the best of servants, but what a master!
Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.
Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.
Cash-payment is not the sole nexus of man with man.
The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.