Thomas Carlyle Quotes on Virtue
Thomas Carlyle's understanding of virtue was bound up with his gospel of work and his cult of moral greatness, and the quotes gathered here reflect both. For Carlyle labour itself has a moral dignity, so that work alone is noble, and virtue is expressed less in profession than in honest, strenuous activity. He held that character is unconcealable, that in every man's writings the character of the writer must lie recorded, a conviction extended in his belief that history is carried forward by the moral force of great individuals. Carlyle also denounced the failures of public life as failures of intellect and integrity together. Drawn from On Heroes, Sartor Resartus, and his essays, these passages present virtue as earnest work, unfeigned character, and moral seriousness.
Quotes
-
“The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History -
Attributed to Thomas Carlyle:
“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.”
-
“Work alone is noble.”
Bk. III, ch. 4. -
Attributed to Thomas Carlyle:
“No great man lives in vain.”
-
“These are the two vices that beset Government Offices; both of them originating in insufficient Intellect,—that sad insufficiency from which, directly or indirectly, all evil whatsoever springs!”
Downing Street (April 1, 1850) -
“In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays(1827–1855) | Goethe (1828).