328 quotes
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!
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property of a man.
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Genius … means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
Again, and again, we say, the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the small, the barren and transient is otherwise.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.
The French Revolution. A History (1837)
Great is the Tailor, but not the greatest.
Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
Wonder is the basis of worship.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850)
A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
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.
Sir Walter Scott (1838)
Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.
Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845)
The difference between Orthodoxy or Mydoxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy.
The French Revolution. A History (1837)
No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.
Sir Walter Scott (1838)
The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)