"The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished."

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More quotes from: Thomas Carlyle

• "A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. "
• "A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things. "
• "A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. "
• "A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in ..."
• "A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus. "
• "A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If ..."
• "A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope. "
• "A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. "
• "Action hangs, as it were, "dissolved" in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; ..."
• "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. "
• "All great peoples are conservative. "
• "All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, ..."
• "All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation ..."
• "As a first approximation, I define "belief" not as the object of believing (a dogma, ..."
• "Be not a slave of words. "
• "Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. "
• "Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man ..."
• "Clever men are good, but they are not the best. "
• "Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. "
• "Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct. "
• "Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable ..."
• "Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer. "
• "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone. "
• "Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries. "
• "Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. "
• "Every noble work is at first impossible. "
• "Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do. "
• "Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on ..."
• "Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no ..."
• "For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to ..."
• "For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer ..."
• "Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth ..."
• "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. "
• "He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of ..."
• "He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything. "
• "Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. "
• "I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. "
• "I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is ..."
• "I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I ..."
• "I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. "
• "If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of ..."
• "If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if ..."
• "If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded. "
• "If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get ..."
• "If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere ..."
• "Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding. "
• "Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, ..."
• "In books lies the soul of the whole past time. "
• "In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment. "
• "In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom ..."
• "Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man. "
• "It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is ..."

• "It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics. "
• "It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age ..."
• "Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species. "
• "Let each become all that he was created capable of being. "
• "Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. ..."
• "Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence. "
• "Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. "
• "Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less ..."
• "Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he ..."
• "Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this ..."
• "Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can. "
• "Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything ..."
• "Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the ..."
• "Music is well said to be the speech of angels. "
• "Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is ..."
• "Necessity dispenseth with decorum. "
• "No age seemed the age of romance to itself. "
• "No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor. "
• "No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes. "
• "No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography ..."
• "No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of ..."
• "No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow ..."
• "No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. "
• "No person is important enough to make me angry. "
• "No pressure, no diamonds. "
• "No violent extreme endures. "
• "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to ..."
• "Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world. "
• "Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, ..."
• "Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, ..."
• "Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom. "
• "Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment. "
• "Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight. "
• "Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to ..."
• "Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ..."
• "Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults ..."
• "Oh, give us the man who sings at his work. "
• "Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we ..."
• "One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes ..."
• "Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with. "
• "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,but to do ..."
• "Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It ..."
• "Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard ..."
• "Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which ..."
• "Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong. "
• "Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious. "
• "Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you ..."
• "Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of ..."
• "Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time. "
• "Silence is more eloquent than words. "
• "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together. "

• "Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn ..."
• "Surely of all the 'rights of man', this right of the ignorant man to be ..."
• "Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether. "
• "Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist. "
• "That monstrous tuberosity of civilized life, the capital of England. "
• "The actual well seen is ideal. "
• "The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist. "
• "The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became ..."
• "The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to ..."
• "The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament ..."
• "The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to ..."
• "The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious. "
• "The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest. "
• "The eye sees what it brings the power to see. "
• "The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself. "
• "The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, ..."
• "The foul sluggard's comfort: 'It will last my time.' "
• "The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. "
• "The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. "
• "The mathematics of high achievement. "
• "The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. "
• "The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is ..."
• "The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough ..."
• "The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever. "
• "The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that ..."
• "The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall. "
• "The spiritual is the parent of the practical. "
• "The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion. "
• "The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing ..."
• "The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was. "
• "There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune. "
• "There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary ..."
• "This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical ..."
• "Thought is the parent of the deed. "
• "Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, ..."
• "To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all ..."
• "True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not ..."
• "Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, ..."
• "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle. "
• "We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings. "
• "Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. "
• "What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished ..."
• "What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite. "
• "When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its ..."
• "When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred ..."
• "When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, ..."
• "Who soweth good seed shall surely reap; The year grows rich as it groweth old, ..."
• "Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that ..."
• "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man ..."
• "Work alone is noble. "
• "Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it ..."