Thomas Carlyle
Quotes
Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done.
Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.
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.
Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.
What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.
Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.
The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.
The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
