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.”

“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”

“Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.”

“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

“Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.”

“Clever men are good, but they are not the best.”

“The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.”

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

“The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.”

“The first duty of man is to conquer fear he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.”

“He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.”

“I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.”

“Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.”

“What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.”

“For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?”

“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People; like Government.”

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

“The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.”

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

“The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.”

“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”

“The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.”

“A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.”

“It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.”