CARLYLE QUOTATIONS

The end of man is an Action not a Thought

Cor inquietum est[the heart is unquiet], saith St Augustine, - especially when the bowels are gone to ruin!

Work is the grandest cure for all the maladies that ever beset mankind.

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 him

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

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Even in the meanest sorts of labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

The purpose of man is in action not thought.                   

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze. 

Writing is a dreadful Labour, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

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

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