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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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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
Little
Guessed
Great
Suspected
Much
Talks
Preaching
Abstract
Begins
Virtue
Littles
Shrewdly

More quotes by Thomas Carlyle

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They only are wise who know that they know nothing.
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Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.
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Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.
Thomas Carlyle
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Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this His universe to go.
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Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another nor could it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.
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.
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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.
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?
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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.
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 good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment.
Thomas Carlyle
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Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.
Thomas Carlyle
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A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet.
Thomas Carlyle
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All human things do require to have an ideal in them to have some soul in them.
Thomas Carlyle
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Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.
Thomas Carlyle
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Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.
Thomas Carlyle
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Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after the more surprising that we do not look around a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.
Thomas Carlyle
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The purpose of man is in action not thought.
Thomas Carlyle
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A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man.
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