Thomas Carlyle

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
Thomas Carlyle

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.
Thomas Carlyle

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.
Thomas Carlyle

History, a distillation of rumour.
Thomas Carlyle

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
Thomas Carlyle

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.
Thomas Carlyle

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
Thomas Carlyle

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
Thomas Carlyle

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
Thomas Carlyle

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
Thomas Carlyle

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Thomas Carlyle

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Thomas Carlyle

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

Endurance is patience concentrated.
Thomas Carlyle

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

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
Thomas Carlyle

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
Thomas Carlyle

Teach a parrot the terms “supply and demand” and you’ve got an economist.
Thomas Carlyle

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
Thomas Carlyle

Worship is transcendent wonder.
Thomas Carlyle

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
Thomas Carlyle

Be not a slave of words.
Thomas Carlyle

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
Thomas Carlyle

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.
Thomas Carlyle

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.
Thomas Carlyle

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
Thomas Carlyle

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Thomas Carlyle

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.
Thomas Carlyle

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.
Thomas Carlyle

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Thomas Carlyle

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
Thomas Carlyle

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.
Thomas Carlyle

All great peoples are conservative.
Thomas Carlyle