Quote

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.

Thomas Carlyle

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Thomas Carlyle
Age: 85 †
Born: 1795
Born: December 4
Died: 1881
Died: February 5
Essayist
Historian
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Mathematician
Novelist
Philosopher
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Philosopher of Chelsea
Love
Issues
Cute
Head
Contempt
Lying
Laughter
Happiness
Deeper
True
Essence
Stills
Spring
Transcendentalism
Still
Humor
Springs
Heart
Joy
Smiles

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone there is perpetual despair.
Thomas Carlyle
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May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.
Thomas Carlyle
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We do everything by custom, even believe by it our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.
Thomas Carlyle
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There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all!... These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is Time to make the dullest man consider and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound?
Thomas Carlyle
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Be not a slave of words.
Thomas Carlyle
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Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.
Thomas Carlyle
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When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.
Thomas Carlyle
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Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.
Thomas Carlyle
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Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them.
Thomas Carlyle
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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!
Thomas Carlyle
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Macaulay is well for awhile, but one wouldn't live under Niagara.
Thomas Carlyle
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All great peoples are conservative.
Thomas Carlyle
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A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Thomas Carlyle
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Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.
Thomas Carlyle
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Time is the silent, never-resting thing ... rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim.
Thomas Carlyle
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Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a Life-purpose... Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is... Even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work!
Thomas Carlyle
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The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows. The greatest of faults, I should say is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle
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There is a majesty and mystery in nature, take her as you will. The essence of poetry comes breathing to a mind that feels from every province of her empire.
Thomas Carlyle
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Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.
Thomas Carlyle
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Government is emphatically a machine: to the discontented a taxing machine, to the contented a machine for securing property.
Thomas Carlyle