Thomas Carlyle Quotes About Duty

We have collected for you the TOP of Thomas Carlyle's best quotes about Duty! Here are collected all the quotes about Duty starting from the birthday of the Philosopher – December 4, 1795! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 13 sayings of Thomas Carlyle about Duty. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

    Men  
  • The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

  • The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it.

    World  
    Thomas Carlyle (1848). “Past and Present: Chartism, and Sartor Resartus”, p.197
  • Silence is the eternal duty of man.

    Men  
    Thomas Carlyle (1866). “On the choice of books: the inaugural address of Thomas Carlyle”, p.79
  • Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

    Father   Eye  
    Thomas Carlyle, A.H.R. Ball (2014). “Selections from Carlyle”, p.111, Cambridge University Press
  • I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,--what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it.

    Men  
  • And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.

    Littles  
    "Past and Present and Chartism".
  • The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself.

    Believe   Men  
    Thomas Carlyle (1871). “Works”, p.135
  • Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break; too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that "would," in this world of ours, is a mere zero to "should," and for most part as the smallest of fractions even to "shall.

    World  
    Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.192, CUP Archive
  • Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science

    Men  
    Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.472, Lulu.com
  • Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

  • It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand.

    Thomas Carlyle (1872*). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Burns. Life of Heyne. German playwrights. Voltaire. Novalis. Signs of the times. On history. Appendix: Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's review of Madame De Stael's 'Allemagne.' Schiller, Goethe and Madame De Stael”
  • Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: "Do the duty which lies nearest to thee," which thou know to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

    Heart  
    1833-4 Sartor Resartus, bk.2, ch.9.
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