“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“My books are friends that never fail me.”
(Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle; 17 March 1817)”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.”
― Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History
“The tragedy of life is not so much what
men suffer, but rather what they miss.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. ”
― Thomas Carlyle
“A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are”
― Thomas Carlyle
“A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. ”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature’s own heart – all else is wind in comparison.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don’t happen at all.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Silence is more eloquent than words.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“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.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“A person usually has two reasons for doing something, a good reason and the real reason.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“One life – a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Every noble work is at first impossible.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprecfien ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Wonder is the basis of worship.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with”
― Thomas Carlyle
“The history of the world is but a biography of great men.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Love is ever the beginning of knowledge as fire is of light.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Fame is no sure test of merit.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this.”
― Thomas Carlyle