Thomas Carlyle was a historian, philosopher, mathematician and writer from Scotland who went on to become one of the most influential thinkers and intellectuals of the 19th century. Carlyle was a noted histo-rian who wrote an authoritative account of the French Revolution in the form of his seminal work ‘The French Revolution: A History’. Some of his other famous works include the novel ‘Sartor Resartus’ and his book of collected lectures titled ‘On Heroes, Hero Worship and The Heroic in History’. Additionally, he wrote plenty of essays, books on philosophy and satirical texts that remain popular to this day. On the other hand, he was also an accomplished mathematician, who is credited with the concept of Carlyle Circle, which is employed in algebra and geometry. Thomas Carlye was also responsible for the setting up of the world famous London Library after he grew unhappy with the facilities at the British National Library. Carlyle was also well-known for his profound thoughts, wit and dry humour; which also gave rise to an enviably large collection of quotes and wisecracks. Here are some of the selected quotes from the man who is credited with terming Economics as ‘the dismal science’.
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Thomas Carlyle
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.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Thomas Carlyle
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with
Thomas Carlyle
Bright, heroic, tender, true and noble was that lost treasure of my heart, who faithfully accompanied me in all the rocky ways and climbings; and I am forever poor without her.
Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.
Thomas Carlyle
The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.
Thomas Carlyle
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Thomas Carlyle
Thirty million, mostly fools.
[When asked the population of England]
Thomas Carlyle
Man is a tool using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
(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.
Thomas Carlyle
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
Thomas Carlyle
Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an ‘apocalypse of Nature,’ a revealing of the ‘open secret.
Thomas Carlyle
For a hundred that can bear adversity, there is hardly one that can bear prosperity.
Thomas Carlyle
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.
Thomas Carlyle
Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, priest and prophet to lead us to heaven-ward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward.
History of the world is the biography of the great man. And I said: The great man always act like a thunder. He storms the skies, while others are waiting to be stormed.
A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer.
Surely of all ‘rights of man’, this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.
Thomas Carlyle
When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
 which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only. )
 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. )
