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The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.

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
Thing
Work
Men
Despise
World
Reverence
Neglect
Learn
Must
Even

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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Earnestness alone makes life eternity.
Thomas Carlyle
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A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for what suits his constitution and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.
Thomas Carlyle
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Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Thomas Carlyle
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The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.
Thomas Carlyle
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Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,--a real, not an imaginary,--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.
Thomas Carlyle
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The whole past is the procession of the present.
Thomas Carlyle
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The goal of yesterday will be our starting-point to-morrow.
Thomas Carlyle
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Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.
Thomas Carlyle
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The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,honest work, which you intend getting done.
Thomas Carlyle
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It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
Thomas Carlyle
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Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day?
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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My books are friends that never fail me.
Thomas Carlyle
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No country can find eternal peace and comfort where the vote of Judas Iscariot is as good as the vote of the Saviour of mankind.
Thomas Carlyle
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Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.
Thomas Carlyle
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Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.
Thomas Carlyle
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Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!
Thomas Carlyle
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I call that [Book of Job], apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen.
Thomas Carlyle
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Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive the length of your tether is now pretty well run and I must request you to talk a little lower in the future.
Thomas Carlyle