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Quotes from Sartor Resartus — Thomas Carlyle

1795–1881 Scotland

← All quotes by Thomas Carlyle

25 quotes

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like?

Sartor Resartus (1833)

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

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)

The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

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.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous.

Sartor Resartus (1833)

Attribution

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