Thomas Carlyle

Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.

On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sorrows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the goal.

O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this for a truth: the thing thou seekest is already here, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see.

Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science

The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!

Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any.

Biography is the only true history.

Experience of actual fact either teaches fools or abolishes them.

History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature, his earliest expression of what may be called thought.

What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?

O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.

Let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.

Wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses which he is loved and blessed by.

Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.

Heroism is the divine relation which, in all times, unites a great man to other men.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than fiction.

If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.