Thomas Carlyle Work Quotations

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

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

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

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder -- waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

He that can work is born to be king of something.

A man perfects himself by working.

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.

There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone there is perpetual despair.

Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know theyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.

The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.

... There is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works.

He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that.

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man.

Genuine Work alone, what thou workest faithfully, that is eternal, as the Almighty Founder and World-Builder himself.