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Quotes from Heroes and Hero-Worship — Thomas Carlyle

1795–1881 Scotland

← All quotes by Thomas Carlyle

52 quotes

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

A man protesting against error is on the way to uniting himself with all men who believe in truth.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

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

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

If Hero mean sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noble-mindedness, of genius.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

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

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him first of all.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

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

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

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.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Carlyle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.