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Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.

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
Hercules
Canst
Thou
Effort
Work
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More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.
Thomas Carlyle
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Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence of worth for more than one day?
Thomas Carlyle
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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
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The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
Thomas Carlyle
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What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.
Thomas Carlyle
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Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?
Thomas Carlyle
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A word spoken in season, at the right moment is the mother of ages.
Thomas Carlyle
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No person is important enough to make me angry.
Thomas Carlyle
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The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind.
Thomas Carlyle
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Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
Thomas Carlyle
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He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.
Thomas Carlyle
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The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
Thomas Carlyle
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Good Christian people, here lies for you an inestimable loan take all heed thereof, in all carefulness, employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.
Thomas Carlyle
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The first sin in our universe was Lucifer's self conceit.
Thomas Carlyle
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Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. If a person speaks with genuine earnestness the thoughts, the emotion and the actual condition of their own heart, others will listen because we all are knit together by the tie of sympathy.
Thomas Carlyle
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It is a fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with.
Thomas Carlyle
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In a certain sense all men are historians.
Thomas Carlyle
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To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.
Thomas Carlyle
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A very sea of thought neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.
Thomas Carlyle
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No man at bottom means injustice it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way by natural dimness and selfishness getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis-able.
Thomas Carlyle