Quote

It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.

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
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Full
Distance
Bounty
Much
Hand
Lies
Undoubtedly
Good
Nations
Deal
Duties
Men
Lying
Duty
Symptoms
Happy
Deals
Engage
Individual
Present
Grand
Suffices
Business
Wise
Individuals
Dimly
Hands
Either
Clearly
Symptom

More quotes by 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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Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such it is an accident, not a property of man.
Thomas Carlyle
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In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.
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.
Thomas Carlyle
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True friends, like ivy and the wall Both stand together, and together fall.
Thomas Carlyle
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The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.
Thomas Carlyle
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History is philosophy teaching by experience.
Thomas Carlyle
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Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: A judicious man, says he, looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him.
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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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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Great is wisdom infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated it is the highest achievement of man.
Thomas Carlyle
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No person is important enough to make me angry.
Thomas Carlyle
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The Highest Being reveals himself in man.
Thomas Carlyle
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He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.
Thomas Carlyle
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Nature admits no lie.
Thomas Carlyle
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The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good but a calculation of the Profitable.
Thomas Carlyle
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We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness.
Thomas Carlyle
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Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.
Thomas Carlyle
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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.
Thomas Carlyle
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The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad.
Thomas Carlyle