28 Inspiring Quotes From Thomas Carlyle

1. A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
2. He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.
3. No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
4. If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
5. No pressure, no diamonds.
6. The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
7. A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.
8. Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.
9. Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
10. Endurance is patience concentrated.
11. When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.
12. The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.
13. Wonder is the basis of worship.
14. Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.
15. It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.
16. Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
17. Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
18. Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
19. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
20. The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.
21. No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.
22. History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
23. To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
24. 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.
25. A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.
26. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
27. Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
28. Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.