Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle Quotes

“The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from Heaven; any making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable for him there,”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“answer; it is the Almighty God’s! Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Leyden jars and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in silence.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual; — their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“To know; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle