Thomas Carlyle

"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

Oration and Silence

"Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius."

Thomas Carlyle

Art and Culture

Talent and Genius

Wit and Humor

"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."

Thomas Carlyle "Heroes and Hero-Worship"

Defeates and Mistakes

"History, a distillation of rumour."

Thomas Carlyle "History of the French Revolution"

History and Nations

"Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time."

Thomas Carlyle "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays"

Oration and Silence

Time and Passing

"Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite."

Thomas Carlyle "Sartor Resartus"

Human

"I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am."

Thomas Carlyle

Nature and Animals

Science and Technology

"Man is a tool-using animal... Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all."

Thomas Carlyle "Sartor Resartus"

Human

"France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams."

Thomas Carlyle "History of the French Revolution"

Authority, Government

History and Nations

Wit and Humor

"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

Thomas Carlyle

History and Nations

"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it."

Thomas Carlyle

God and Religion

Various