Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Carlyle
“Think of you! I do not think of you; you are always before my soul.”
“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.”
“I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.”
“I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.”
“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.”
topics: the-hero-as-a-man-of-letters
“When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.”
“It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.”
“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”
“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”
“We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.”
“A person usually has two reasons for doing something, a good reason and the real reason.”
“How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?”
“إنه لخير للبشر لو كفوا عن تقليب ذكريات الأحزان الغابرة بخيالهم المتقد.”
topics: رواية
“إننى وحيد تماما. وأجد الحياة ممتعة جدا فى هذه البقعة التى انشئت للأرواح المشابهة لروحى. إننى سعيد جدا ومستغرق فى الإحساس بالوجود الهادئ.”
“Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.”
“When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.”
topics: education , facts , learning , life , life-lessons , mathematics , philosophy , self-discovery , truth , youth
“Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.”
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Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.
Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher, but while at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.