Thomas Carlyle Quotes about Character

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Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.

Thomas Carlyle

Character, Men, Bricks And Mortar

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nathan Haskell Dole, George Henry Lewes, Thomas Carlyle, John Storer Cobb (1902*). “The Works of Goethe”

This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

Thomas Carlyle

Character, Skills, Soul

Thomas Carlyle (1855). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: By Thomas Carlyle”, p.193

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

Thomas Carlyle

Memories, Writing, Character

Thomas Carlyle, Chris Vanden Bossche (2002). “Historical Essays”, p.20, Univ of California Press

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

Thomas Carlyle

Wise, Distance, Character

Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.13, Lulu.com

The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.

Thomas Carlyle

Beautiful, Character, Worship

Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.23, Lulu.com

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

Thomas Carlyle

Art, Character, Men

Thomas Carlyle (1839). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays”, p.2