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A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

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
Society
Cease
Cleared
Away
Fairs
Ceases
Firsts
Rise
Thereby
First
Fair
Foul
Work
Fields
Jungle
Perfects
Men
Instead
Seed
Unwholesome
Cities
Desert
Jungles
Working
Seeds
Stately

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Reform, like charity, must begin at home.
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We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.
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Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.
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Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?
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A word spoken in season, at the right moment is the mother of ages.
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What this country needs is a man who knows God other than by heresay.
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Rare benevolence, the minister of God.
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Are not our greatest men as good as lost? The men that walk daily among us, warming us, feeding us, walk shrouded in darkness, mere mythic men.
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Science has done much for us but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film.
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There is something in man which your science cannot satisfy.
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The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slopshirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.
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The Persians are called the French of the East we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people a people of wildstrong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.
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A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.
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Doubt of any kind cannot be resolved except by action.
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Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.
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The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once.
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Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
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The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
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