Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
"Thomas Carlyle" was a Scottish people/Scottish philosopher, satire/satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher."Thomas Carlyle" (bio), Dumfries-and-Galloway, 2008, webpage:
[http://www.dumfries-and-galloway.co.uk/people/
-->carlyle.htm dumfries-and-galloway.co.uk-carlyle].
Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the Great Man".
He was a very respected historian and his book The French Revolution: A History remains popular nowadays and it was the inspiration for Charles Dickens/Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is considered one of the finest works of the 19th century.
A great polemicist, he called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia and his Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question remains controversial.
"Thomas Carlyle" (bio), Dumfries-and-Galloway, 2008, webpage:
[http://www.dumfries-and-galloway.co.uk/people/
If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous philosophers! More Thomas Carlyle on Wikipedia.True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laugther, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
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.
The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.
The Courage that we all prize and seek is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Silence is more eloquent than words.
The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
No sadder proof can be given by man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
When words leave off, music begins.
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.
In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.
Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.
Enjoy things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
It is not a lucky word, this name 'impossible'; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
Happy are the people whose annals are blank in history books.
All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.
In idleness there is a perpetual despair.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
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.
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.
A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther.
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