A Very Brief Introduction to Thomas Carlyle and 27 Thought-Provoking Quotes

Over the course of 40 years of writing, I've lost track of how many times I unearthed a pointed, pithy quote by Thomas Carlyle. Even so, I never really knew who he was. Last week I found (in a folder on my laptop) a Word doc with ten pages of quotes by Carlyle. Today I was aiming to share a portion of those, but thought maybe it's time to find out a little more who he was.  

Thomas Carlyle  (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a prominent Scottish essayist, historian, philosopher, and satirical writer. He was a major intellectual figure in the Victorian era, often called the "Sage of Chelsea" and regarded by contemporaries as the "undoubted head of English letters" and a secular prophet.

He was born in Scotland, into a strict Calvinist family, and died in London at the age of 85. Carlyle's writings influenced literature, history, and social thought with a passionate, idiosyncratic style that blended philosophy, history, and moral critique.

I only knew him for his one sentence zingers, but learned this weekend that he wrote volumes. His three-volume The French Revolution: A History has been called a "a masterpiece of historical writing." Carlyle's work directly influenced Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

In 1841 he published a collection of his lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History in which he argued that great individuals (heroes) shape history. In our post-modern era, we tend to focus on their feet of clay. His six-volume bio of Friedrich II of Prussia was published in 1858-65, who must have evidently been a hero of his. 

Carlyle's satrical, philosophic novel Sartor Resartus is so strikingly original that I'm thinking of writing a blog post about it. It's full title: Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books. The novel is a hybrid of fiction, autobiography, and social commentary. Its Latin title translates to "The Tailor Re-tailored" (or "The Tailor Patched"). The premise actually sounds hilarious. It's available at Project Gutenberg.

I was only intending to write a very brief intro to a boatload of quotes, but thought you may find him worth knowing better. Carlyle criticized the "machinery" of modern industrial society, laissez-faire economics, and what he saw as moral decay. He championed strong leadership, work ethic, and spiritual renewal. He profoundly shaped Victorian culture, with admirers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, and remains studied for his prose style and role in Romanticism-to-Victorian transitions.  

Though Carlyle is included in Hammerton's Outline of Great Books, he is not covered in 501 Great Writers, edited by Julian Patrck.

Without further adieu, a small collection of quotes from Carlyle.

Bust of Carlyle in Chelsea Library

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy. 

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. 

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner. 

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things. 

 

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. 

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 the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. 

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus. 

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope. 

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. 

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. 

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. 

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.  

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. 

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.  (EdNote: Especially now with Polymarket.)

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am. 

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded. 

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. 

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can. 

No pressure, no diamonds. 

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment. 

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are. 

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time. 

The greatest university of all is a collection of books. 

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Do you find Carlyle stimulating? Leave a note in the comments.

Orwell Observations from Life on the Margins: Down and Out in Paris and London

Life at the bottom is no piece of cake. This is one fact you notice from reading George Orwell's memoir Down and Out in Paris and London. The book details what a life of menial labor and poverty consists of. 

The book is divided into two parts, the first being Orwell's experiences in Paris and the lessons he learned, such as how the starving manage to subsist, as he was one of them. In the latter part of his Paris life, Orwell works as a dishwasher in a hotel restaurant kitchen and lives in a slum. He also writes about the conditions at a charity hospital in Paris. 

Much of the book features stories about the array of characters he meets along the way along with details of the squalor and indignities people endure to survive. Occasionally, however, he steps back to interpret what he's seen, sharing conclusions he's drawn from his experiences. What's fascinating, disturbing or discouraging (depending on yout point of view) is how relevant these matters remain,

In chapter 22 he questions how there has come to be such a disparty between rich and and poor. More importantly, why do the middle classes side with the rich and separate themselves from the "vermin" who slave away all their waking hours doing work that is demeaning and sometimes useless?

Orwell concludes: I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. 

A little further on he elaborates.

They (middle class) side with the rich because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. Foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions. 

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? 

Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon's poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line "Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres" by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man's experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. "Anything," he thinks, "any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose."

* * * 

What. are your thoughts about Orwell's observations? How are things different? And how are they the same? One thing that appears to have changed over the past century: we seem to have a lot more bread and circuses.

I'm interested in your thoughts. Comments welcome.

* * * 

Related Links
Orwell-related blog posts

George Orwell's "How the Poor Die": Exploring Themes of Inequality, Neglect and Other Grim Realities

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/09/george-orwells-how-poor-die-exploring.html

George Orwell on Wells, Hitler and "Patriotism vs. the World State"

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/07/george-orwell-on-wells-hitler-and.html

Orwell on Media Mischief

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/11/orwell-on-media-mischief.html

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Is Instructive on Many Levels, Plus a Good Read

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/08/orwells-homage-to-catalonia-is.html

Public Introspection: George Orwell's Why I Write

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/08/public-introspection-george-orwells-why.html

Shooting an Elephant
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2011/05/shooting-elephant.html

Dylan Is His Theme: A Visit with K.G. Miles, Author of the Troubadour Tales Series

K.G. Miles

Earlier this spring I learned that K.G. Miles, author of two books devoted to places Bob Dylan has had relationships with -- London and New York -- was assembling a book about Bob Dylan's life in Minnesota. Miles first two books are the first in a four-part series under the umbrella Troubadour Tales.  The Minnesota volume is slated for 2023. 

The third book in this series will be released later this month, August 18. The theme in this third book has to do with Dylan's relationship to Dylan Thomas. To enrich its value Miles reached out to Dylan Thomas expert Jeff Towns. It looks to be an eye-opener for many Dylan fans. 

It's fun to see the variety of approaches authors have taken with regards to the music and life of our generation's most significant singer/songwriter.

EN: How did you first become interested in the music of Bob Dylan? 

KG Miles: My Auntie Di took me to the Isle of Wight in 1969 and as about 9 years old my only real memory was of these alien creatures!. I came from a housing estate in South London where everything was pretty grey. She may as well have taken me to Mars!

Nevertheless, as with the Beatles and Elvis, there was never a time in my life when I wasn't aware of Bob Dylan. 

Like many people who were too young to remember the 60's I had to work chronologically back from Bob's music. My entry point, as it was for a lot in the UK, was More Greatest Hits, an astonishing double album that wasn't just a greatest hits at all and still stands the test of time as the most extraordinary introduction to Dylan's music. 

As a teenager the poster on my wall was from Dont Look Back (this poster now proudly hangs in a frame at The Dylan Room in the Troubadour Club in London).

Despite punk hitting (as with Sgt. Pepper, punk never really changed music at all!) the Big Bang for many in the UK (and places like Japan) was the 1978 tour. As many did, I queued all night on the streets of London for tickets and the overspill festival at Blackbushe kick started the modern music festival. (People don't realize that the old hippy festivals such as Glastonbury had been and gone. Only when they saw the success of Blackbushe, did they start up again.)

I was hooked completely from then on and I can't believe that he is still in 2022 making extraordinary, new music....and next month I am off to see him again at The Palladium. Astonishing.

EN: You’ve published two Troubador Tales books about Dylan – Dylan in London and Dylan in the Big Apple. What sets these apart from the many other books about Dylan?

KGM: There are hundreds upon hundreds of Bob Dylan books and we are decades on from the publication of Not Another Bob Dylan book! For the Bob Dylan in London book, with my co author Jackie Lees, we very much wanted to impart what we had found about Bob in London to other fans. It was astonishing that Bob Dylan in London had never been a book before. (Hundreds upon hundreds of books are just telling us what Bob means by his lyrics and 99% of it is likely to be wrong. Also sometimes Gibraltar just rhymes with Altar!). We also wanted people to use the book as a guide, so there is a map. Jackie and I had been on a pilgrimage and we wanted others to see the wonderful places in a currently sparse music tourism. We also wanted the books to be an easy read. Too many Dylan writers start to think they ARE Bob Dylan and make the books turgid in an attempt to be deep and meaningful. Bob Dylan is fun and so are the books. I want a reader to get the joy and to turn each page thinking, "Wow! I never knew that!"

Easily the best review I had was one that said the Troubadour Tales were "refreshingly non academic!"

EN: What is the third book about that you’re releasing later this summer?

KGM: I was lucky that I got approached by great publishers, McNidder & Grace and they wanted 4 books. Bob Dylan in London had been a great success. (A Number one Amazon bestseller...beating Tom Jones!) For the third I wanted to explore the creative links between Bob and Dylan Thomas. (And yes, I have definitively proven in the book that he got his name from the Welsh poet. 

To me Bob and Dylan Thomas are the two rock n roll poets. They are the only artists who truly master the art of Performed Literature. I was so lucky to have on board a Bob fan and an expert on Dylan Thomas, Jeff Towns. We explored the creative Venn diagram, the links that tie the two men, everyone from the obvious such as Patti Smith and Arthur Rimbaud to the less obvious such as Nelson Algren and Johnnie Ray. It was a joyous project in every way!

As both men appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper, we were honoured to have the same cover artist for our book...Peter Blake. We are hoping that you can indeed judge a book by it's astonishing cover!

EN: I think writers enjoy researching as much as writing because of all the things we learn along the way. What have been your two or three biggest insights gained while writing and assembling these books?

KGM: So many insights! From finding the correct chronology for Bob's first London visit to the finding of the extraordinary George Margolin from Greenwich Village for the Big Apple book. Mostly though, anyone who looks at the life of Bob Dylan will see from Dinkytown to London to Greenwich Village and beyond, that when a door opened for him, he just ran through. As someone for whom a door opened at the age of 61 it is a lesson for life. Run through!

I hope also there is an insight in the books into the real Bob Dylan, the man you hear on Theme Time Radio who gets so much joy from music, who embraces the full fat fun of life.

EN: How many more books do you have planned for this series?

Marc Percansky (center) with the artists from Brazil
who painted this six story high mural in Minneapolis

KGM: After Two Dylans there is hopefully one more Troubadour Tales book. I had thought of Japan which holds a special place in Bob's heart, as he does from them. It was too difficult to do when travel was restricted. It is a strange and mysterious place to a boy from South London.

Bob Dylan in Minnesota is a work in progress and in addition to you, Ed,  I have been overwhelmed by the friendliness and enthusiasm from Paul Metsa, Spider John Koerner, Marc Percansky, Matt Steichen, Kevin Odegard etc. Minnesota people are clearly wonderful and for me it is important to get this book absolutely right so that it can be the definitive, useable guide to Duluth, Hibbing and Dinkytown. I love visiting and giving a talk at the Tulsa Center but to me there is only one place that Center should have been... Minnesota.

EN: Where can people find your books if they want to purchase?

KGM: Bob Dylan in London and Bob Dylan in the Big Apple can both be bought via any bookseller or are about $9  (so a steal!) on Amazon. Two Dylans will be out on 18th August and on Amazon over here. If you know someone with Amazon Prime it can be soon winging its way to any Bob Dylan fan in the world!!

* * * 

Here's one of the many kind reviews of Miles' book on London, by Harvard prof and author Richard Thomas who gave a John Bushey Memorial Lecture at Duluth Dylan Fest  a few years back:

‘The Troubadour, where Dylan played in 1962 on his first trip out of America, the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, venues of the mid-1960s masterpiece performances before and after “going electric”, the triumphant return to Earl’s Court in 1978, and Camden Town, scene of a 1993 Dylan stroll and photo session. These are just some of the places in this endlessly invigorating city to which Jackie Lees and KG Miles take us in Bob Dylan in London: Troubadour Tales, their highly readable and essential archaeological tour through Bob Dylan’s London, a city that has always been dear to him.’

Professor Richard F. Thomas, Harvard University

Author of Why Bob Dylan Matters

Related Link

A Visit With Richard F. Thomas

A Thought Stimulated by Reflecting on the Lives of London, Fitzgerald, Orwell, Camus and Others

Now that I'm 68, I can't help but notice all the writers, rock stars and other famous sorts who never made it this far. I believe Michener was roughly this age when he declared it to be one of his great achievements to have never spent a night in jail. The tongue may have been in his cheek when he said this, and I know it's something Richard Branson can't say, though Branson would chime in that his night behind bars was a highly instructive and motivational experience.

Last night I was reading an essay on George Orwell, a significant writer who died in 1950, only 46 years old. Upon reading this it my mind clicked on a recent article that cited how Albert Camus likewise came to his end at age 46. Both Camus and Orwell left reverberations for decades afterwards.

These thoughts soon triggered my recollection that Jack London, author of 40 books and countless stories, died at age 40. I'm not envious, but am indeed in awe of such productivity. And then there's F. Scott Fitzgerald, 44 when he finished drinking himself to death.

London, pictured here, whose career peaked a little earlier than Fitzgerald's, was the highest paid short story writer of his day, until Fitzgerald exceeded him during the Roaring Twenties. Keep in mind, magazines had no radio or television competition. A century ago people read for entertainment, as opposed to watching videos or movies. It was a golden age for short story writers.

I can't recall my introduction to Camus. It was a reading of The Stranger, but whether in high school or college I can't recall. I do remember studying Camus in an Existential Literature class my second semester at O.U. Dr Trevas had us read and produce papers on Camus, Sartre and Joseph Fletcher, author of Situation Ethics. Both Camus and Sartre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, though Sartre rejected the award.

The point of this random flow of semi-related notions has to do with the massive influence of these writers who died more than two decades younger than I.

And then there's Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Only 35, yet more than 40 symphonies and countless lesser works. Amazing. Chopin still lives on as well, though he never reached his fortieth birthday.

Let's not forget Franz Kafka (40), Stephen Crane (29), Anton Chekhov (44), Thomas Wolfe (37) and Thoreau (44).... all so young, yet unforgotten.

* * * *

As I began thinking about these many talented people whose lifespans seem so brief, I was reminded of all the artists, writers, actors and musicians who ended their careers by their own hand.  (Follow the link below to Tina Mion's New Year's Eve Party in Purgatory.)

* * * * 

Then my mind returns to the day the music died, that plane crash in an Iowa cornfield in 1959. Buddy Holly was only 22. Ritchie Valens (La Bamba) even younger, and 28 year old J.P. Richardson, the old man of the group, only 28. (Photo at right courtesy Gary Firstenberg)

* * * *

I've always told young people, "Life is longer than you think. Pursue your dreams and little by little you will achieve more than you can imagine." As I reflect on these productive giants, and especially those whose lives were cut short, I have to reconsider. 

We can't take tomorrow for granted. The time to begin really living is today.

Related Links
Shooting an Elephant
Tina Mion's New Year's Eve Party in Purgatory for Suicides
A Brief Glance at the Life of William Sydney Porter, a.k.a. O Henry

Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross Is on the Move

Low res reproduction used with permission.

In every field of endeavor there are dozens or even hundreds of names that are familiar to those who follow that sport or discipline, but only a handful whose names are actually commonly recognized by all. For example, in boxing, Muhammed Ali. Maybe Joe Louis. In baseball Joe Dimaggio became a national symbol of something bigger than baseball. In soccer, how many household names are there? Yet most people, when the hear the name Pele would associate it soccer.

In architecture there's Frank Lloyd Wright, but how many others are household names? (Howard Roark doesn't count.)

So it is that though there are thousands of 20th century artists written up in the art magazines, you can probably count on one hand the majors known by all: Picasso, Warhol, Duchamp and Dali.* Even Duchamp may be questionable, despite the fact that some art historians cite him as the most significant of these big four for having pulled the thread that unravelled modern art, resulting in art's post-modern demise. (Basquiat my now be more memorable today than even Duchamp only because a Hollywood film highlighted him, a film that featured another pop culture emblem, David Bowie.)

All this to say that if you're in London in October, there will be a major show featuring two of these art luminaries, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali. Today's Art Daily features a story about moving Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross from it's home in Glasgow to London for this major show. If you click on the link it will give you a sense of the scale of this painting.

Note the dramatic angle of the cross and the figure suspended there. It hovers as if parallel to the earth, and yet the vertical post points to this body of water, which you might imagine to be the Sea og Galilee, though in point of fact it is the bay of Port Lligat where Dali lived at the time.

When Dali painted this piece in 1951-52 he said the image came to him "in a 'cosmic dream' in which I saw this image in colour and which in my dream represented the 'nucleus of the atom.' This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it 'the very unity of the universe,' the Christ!"" **

If you draw lines from the hands to the feet it forms a triangle, which represents the Trinity. The head forms a circle in the middle of the triangle, representing the unity of all things.

What I find interesting is how the artist was not taken seriously by many art critics when he painted this. They labeled it "kitsch", which when I was an art school student in Ohio was pretty much the ultimate insult, comparing it to cheap paintings of Elvis on velour that you might find in tourist shops. Because it wasn't "far out" like much of his other work one critic said it was a stunt.

For a good read on the role of critics, check out this story in the Guardian on who decides what constitutes art?

One of the truly great painters of the past century, it's a privilege to have the Dali Museum located in the U.S. within a stone's throw of another mecca of contemporary life, Disney World. St. Petersburg is adjacent to Tampa, and a worthwhile destination there is the Dali Museum. You will not see Christ of Saint John of the Cross there, but you will see plenty to blow your mind, as the saying goes.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.

*It's interesting how one of the signs of a person's pop worth is that we call them by a single name, eg. Dylan
** I, too, had an image to me in a dream which I sketched afterward and called The God House. Writing about this here has served to prod me to consider following through on that painting some day.