Mark Twain vs. Thomas Carlyle
Read 20 entries attributed to Mark Twain alongside 20 attributed to Thomas Carlyle. Compare the wording and topic labels.
This page places 20 entries attributed to Mark Twain alongside 20 attributed to Thomas Carlyle. Each selection is ordered by stored importance score. These are selections from QuoteLineage, not complete accounts of either author's work.
Topic labels present in both displayed selections: books, life, philosophy, knowledge. Shared labels do not by themselves demonstrate agreement, disagreement, or influence between the authors.
Attributed to Mark Twain, entry #145: "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I…"
Attributed to Thomas Carlyle, entry #100443: "Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only…"
Side-by-Side Comparison
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910
Mark Twain (1835) was an American writer and humorist, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
"I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfe…"
#Ethics"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), ed. John Paul"
#Aesthetics"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
#death"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
#Aesthetics"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
#books"When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain."
#love"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
#Aesthetics"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."
#love"Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience"
#Human Nature"Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near m…"
#Ethics"I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
#Aesthetics"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
#life"He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty."
#Aesthetics"He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
#Aesthetics"It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a Unite…"
#Philosophy"She had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her …"
#knowledge"I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a divi…"
#humor"Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. We…"
#success"Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in …"
#love"I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war wherein he can spectac…"
#historyThomas Carlyle
1795 – 1881
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. Known as the "sage of Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the Victorian era.
"Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement no…"
#mind"Religion was the pole-star for my father. Rude and uncultivated as he otherwise was, it made him and kept him "in all points a man." Oh! when I think that al…"
#knowledge"The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully."
#life"What the Universities have mainly done—what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, …"
#books"Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw material…"
#religion"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all."
#politics"Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die."
#life"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so…"
#knowledge": A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason."
#philosophy"Europe has made much; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Tho…"
#life"The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here."
#life"Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of…"
#mind"The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere!…"
#knowledge"Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claim…"
#truth"Cannot we understand how these men worshipped Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism.…"
#knowledge"Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets and law-penalties restrain him. He e…"
#justice"Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-sergeant eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigab…"
#knowledge"Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man! Hero- worship, true and blessed, or else …"
#religion"A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he is,—alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least measure—Himse…"
#religion"Man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the noble People that makes the noble Government…"
#truth