Thomas Carlyle

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

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.

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

Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke...let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair.

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!

History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life.

Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own.