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 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.
Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally, among mankind.
The age of miracles is forever here.
The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
O Time! Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing!
Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away? It is you, my mother.
In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden, - "Speech is silver, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity