Thomas Carlyle Quotes

The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature's own heart - all else is wind in comparison.

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

(Quoted by Thomas Carlyle) The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

My books are friends that never fail me."

(Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle; 17 March 1817)

No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying
as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.

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.

One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore!

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.

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.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes.

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books.

You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt against you ...

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!