Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795-February 5, 1881) was a Scottish essayist and historian. His works were controversial yet highly praised.
His books include: The Life of Schiller, 1826; The French Revolution, 1837; and On Heros and Hero Worship, 1840.
He also translated Goethe's works from German into English. Thomas Carlyle wrote:
<The Bible is the truest utterance that ever came by alphabetic letters from the soul of man, through which, as through a window divinely opened, all men can look into the stillness of eternity, and discern in glimpses their far- distant, long-forgotten home.> 1795TC001
<I call the Book of Job, apart from all the theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.> 1795TC002
In his Miscellaneous Papers, Thomas Carlyle wrote:
<The Hebrew Bible, is it not before all things true as no other book ever was or will be?> 1795TC003
In his essays Corn-Law Rhymes, Carlyle wrote:
<In the poorest cottage are books: is one Book wherein, for several thousand of years, the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him.> 1795TC004
In his Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 1827, Carlyle wrote:
<The Bible itself has, in all changes of theory about it, this as its highest distinction: that it is the truest of all books. The Book springs, every word of it, from the intensest convictions, from the very heart's core, of those who penned it; and has not that been a successful Book? Did all the Paternoster Rows of the world ever hear of one so successful?> 1795TC005
In 1827, Thomas Carlyle wrote in The State of German Literature:
<The three great elements of modern civilization: gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.> 1795TC006
In Book III, Chapter III of his Sartor Resartus, 1833-34, Thomas Carlyle wrote:
<If thou ask to what height man has carried it, look to our divinest symbol: Jesus of Nazareth, and His life, and His biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human thought never reached; this is Christianity and Christendom-a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character, whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into and anew made manifest.> 1795TC007
In Book II, Chapter 9 of Sartor Resartus, he wrote:
<Love not Pleasure; love God.> 1795TC008
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1795TC001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1927, 1965), p. 18.
1795TC002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle. Lewis C. Henry, Best Quotations For All Occasions (Greenwich, CONN: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1961), p. 21.
1795TC003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, Miscellaneous Papers, p. 388. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 73.
1795TC004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, Essays: Corn-Law Rhymes. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 73.
1795TC005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 73.
1795TC006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, 1827, in The State of German Literature, Critical and Miscellaneous. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 472.
1795TC007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book III, Chapter III. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 73.
1795TC008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Thomas Carlyle, 1833-1834, in Sartor Resartus. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 473.