Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a eminent—and controversial—Scottish historian, political philosopher, and essayist from the Victorian era.
Known for his incisive critique of British society, Carlyle was one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century. However, since the early 1900s, his work has been censured for his belief that powerful, heroic individuals can transform the course of humanity and for his veneration of the Germanic spirit—both of which invigorated Nazi ideologues.
Carlyle studied and translated German literature in his early years. Some of his earliest writings describe a polarity between the “sacrificial seriousness” of the German culture and the “superficial, pleasure-seeking” British culture. In Signs of the Times (1829,) he described the chasm between the material advancements of the machine age and the soulless mediocrity of “modern man.”
Carlyle’s first truly successful book was the three-volume The French Revolution (1837.) Considered a reliable account of the early course of the Revolution, it was used for reference by Charles Dickens while writing his A Tale of Two Cities (1859.)
At the core of Carlyle’s political philosophy was his attribution of all historical progress solely to mighty heroes who served as role models for how people should live. He wrote, “No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He expounded these beliefs in The French Revolution, On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841,) and History of Frederick the Great (1858–1865; 6 volumes.) These books profoundly influenced German and Italian fascism and painted Carlyle as a progenitor of the concept of totalitarian regimes.
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No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
—Thomas Carlyle
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
—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.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Unhappiness
Men’s hearts ought not be set against one another, but set with one another, and all against evil only.
—Thomas Carlyle
Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Potential
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
—Thomas Carlyle
Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.
—Thomas Carlyle
Today is not yesterday. We ourselves change. How can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful, yet ever needful; and if memory has its force and worth, so also has hope.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Change
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Beginning
There is endless merit in a man’s knowing when to have done.
—Thomas Carlyle
The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
—Thomas Carlyle
Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Perfection
The fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceives me, unity itself divided by zero will give infinity.
—Thomas Carlyle
By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Change
Speech is great, but silence is greater.
—Thomas Carlyle
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Adversity
The true past departs not; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.
—Thomas Carlyle
For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
—Thomas Carlyle
There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Proverbs
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
The end of man is action.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Getting Going, Procrastination, Inaction
If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle
Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty.
—Thomas Carlyle
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
—Thomas Carlyle
All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Ideals
There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Man
No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Action, Life
Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing, every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will, can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.
—Thomas Carlyle
Everywhere in life the true question is, not what we have gained, but what we do.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Doing
That a Parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only.
—Thomas Carlyle
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
—Thomas Carlyle
With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Health
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
—Thomas Carlyle
The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Excellence, Ability
Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
—Thomas Carlyle
Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
The eye of the intellect sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle
Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Forgiveness
All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble … A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.
—Thomas Carlyle
What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.
—Thomas Carlyle
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Work
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.
—Thomas Carlyle
If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
—Thomas Carlyle
Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.
—Thomas Carlyle
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Knowledge
The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
—Thomas Carlyle
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
—Thomas Carlyle
Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
—Thomas Carlyle
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
—Thomas Carlyle
Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.
—Thomas Carlyle
Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so.
—Thomas Carlyle
A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the matter of ages.
—Thomas Carlyle
The condition of the most passionate enthusiast is to be preferred over the individual who, because of the fear of making a mistake, won’t in the end affirm or deny anything.
—Thomas Carlyle
Man is a tool-using animal…Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
—Thomas Carlyle
The heart always sees before than the head can see.
—Thomas Carlyle
We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Judgment
No sadder proof can be given of a person’s own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.
—Thomas Carlyle
Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
—Thomas Carlyle
Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?
—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
Topics: Obstacles, Adversity, Difficulties, Attitude, Decisions
Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.
—Thomas Carlyle
In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
—Thomas Carlyle
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Doing
Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.
—Thomas Carlyle
The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Wealth
All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Greatness
A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.
—Thomas Carlyle
Silence is more eloquent than words.
—Thomas Carlyle
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Greatness, One liners
There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully, to be right; he will grow daily more and more right.
—Thomas Carlyle
The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Fear
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
—Thomas Carlyle
The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Laughter
The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
—Thomas Carlyle
The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
—Thomas Carlyle
Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.
—Thomas Carlyle
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
—Thomas Carlyle
The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.
—Thomas Carlyle
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
—Thomas Carlyle
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
A man’s honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this, if he is to communicate anything.
—Thomas Carlyle
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man’s life.
—Thomas Carlyle
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Experience
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle
The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
—Thomas Carlyle
Topics: Despair
Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle
We are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal.
—Thomas Carlyle
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