Thomas Carlyle Quotes

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

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

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

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

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

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.

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.

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