Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you. Thomas Carlyle More Quotes by Thomas Carlyle More Quotes From Thomas Carlyle The greatest fault is to be conscious of none. Thomas Carlyle faultsconscious The meaning of song goes deep. Who in logical words can explain the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into that! Thomas Carlyle speechmusicsong The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor. Thomas Carlyle glowingmetaphorlanguage Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front? Thomas Carlyle public-opiniondegreeswind A man's perfection is his work. Thomas Carlyle perfectionworkmen A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by? Thomas Carlyle spiritualnumbersbelieve At worst, is not this an unjust world, full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-footed or two-footed? Thomas Carlyle fourtwoworld God Almighty never created a man half as wise as he looks. Thomas Carlyle wisemenlooks I had a lifelong quarrel with God, but in the end we made up. Thomas Carlyle endschristianityfaith Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable. Thomas Carlyle partyeyefather Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get. Thomas Carlyle soulmenbelieve Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Thomas Carlyle crowsoldierwar For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion. Thomas Carlyle being-thankfulperfectionlove But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. Thomas Carlyle simplerightshappiness Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES. Thomas Carlyle menphilosophylying There are female dandies as well as clothes-wearing men; and the former are as objectionable as the latter. Thomas Carlyle clothesfashionmen History is a great dust heap. Thomas Carlyle dusthistory Not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Thomas Carlyle kingswarheaven The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money. Thomas Carlyle making-moneyhellthese-days Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together. Thomas Carlyle errorspracticetogether
