113 Quotes By Thomas Carlyle


Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
Thomas Carlyle on work

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.
Thomas Carlyle on work

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.
Thomas Carlyle on age

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
Thomas Carlyle on fun

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.
Thomas Carlyle on hope

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Thomas Carlyle on humor

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.
Thomas Carlyle on laughter

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Thomas Carlyle on life

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.
Thomas Carlyle on necessity

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 on silence

Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!
Thomas Carlyle on spirituality

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
Thomas Carlyle on vision

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green
Thomas Carlyle on work