The voices / 1210 fragments

Thomas Carlyle

1795 AD — 1881 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

Author and source reference ↗

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Historical source references

Richter
State of German Literature
Goethe
Burns
Voltaire
Sir Walter Scott
Varnhagen Von Ense's Memoirs
Life of Frederick the Great
Sartor Resartus
Heroes and Hero-Worship
Action · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Duty · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Experience · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Genius · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Greatness · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Hope · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Infidelity · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Joy · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Labor · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Laughter · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Man · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Money · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Occupation · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Perseverance · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Piety · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Reform · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Rest · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Superstition · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Words · anthology attribution: Carlyle
Work · anthology attribution: Carlyle

Archive entries

01c. 1838 AD

Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,—imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,—"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of—the air!"

Thomas Carlyle / quote

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02c. 1838 AD

Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

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03c. 1838 AD

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

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04c. 1838 AD

We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

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05c. 1838 AD

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?

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06c. 1838 AD

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

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07c. 1838 AD

His religion at best is an anxious wish,—like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.

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08c. 1838 AD

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."

Thomas Carlyle / quote

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09c. 1838 AD

We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and brotherly commiseration.

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10c. 1838 AD

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

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11c. 1838 AD

Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time.

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12c. 1838 AD

To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents,—the tools to him that can handle them.

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13c. 1838 AD

Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!

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14c. 1838 AD

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

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15c. 1838 AD

Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.

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16c. 1838 AD

It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.

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17c. 1838 AD

The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing."

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18c. 1838 AD

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books.

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19c. 1838 AD

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,—"Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

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20c. 1838 AD

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

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21c. 1838 AD

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

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22c. 1838 AD

The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.

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23c. 1838 AD

One life,—a little gleam of time between two Eternities.

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24c. 1838 AD

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

Thomas Carlyle / quote

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Thomas Carlyle

Archive entries

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Tao Te Ching

The Prophet