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There Are Good And Bad Times, But Our Mood Changes More Often Than Our Fortune.
-Thomas Carlyle
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There Are Good And

Thomas Carlyle
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There Are Good And Bad Times, But Our Mood Changes More Often Than Our Fortune.

Understanding the Quote: "there are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often..."

This quote by Thomas Carlyle reflects deeply on the theme of mood changes. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mood Changes, Bad Times, Fortune, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Thomas Carlyle interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mood changes and bad times. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Mood Changes
Bad Times
Fortune
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To Reform A World, To Reform A Nation, No Wise Man Will Undertake; And All But Foolish Men Know, That The Only Solid, Though A Far Slower Reformation, Is What Each Begins And Perfects On Himself.
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The Orator Persuades And Carries All With Him, He Knows Not How; The Rhetorician Can Prove That He Ought To Have Persuaded And Carried All With Him.
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The Best Lesson Which We Get From The Tragedy Of Karbala Is That Husain And His Companions Were Rigid Believers In God. They Illustrated That The Numerical Superiority Does Not Count When It Comes To The Truth And The Falsehood. The Victory Of Husain, Despite His Minority, Marvels Me!
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What A Wretched Thing Is All Fame! A Renown Of The Highest Sort Endures, Say, For Two Thousand Years. And Then? Why, Then, A Fathomless Eternity Swallows It. Work For Eternity; Not The Meagre Rhetorical Eternity Of The Periodical Critics, But For The Real Eternity Wherein Dwelleth The Divine.
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Wisdom
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Vote
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Love
Cute
Happiness
A Man Lives By Believing Something: Not By Debating And Arguing About Many Things.
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Faith
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Motivational
Progress
Purpose
In The Poorest Cottage Are Books: Is One Book, Wherein For Several Thousands Of Years The Spirit Of Man Has Found Light, And Nourishment, And An Interpreting Response To Whatever Is Deepest In Him.
Book
Men
Light
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Poetry
Existence
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Looks
Eternity
Produce, Produce! Were It But The Pitifulest, Infinitesimal Fraction Of A Product, Produce It In God's Name. 'tis The Utmost Thou Hast In Thee? Out With It Then! Up, Up! Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth To Do, Do It With Thy Whole Might.
Hands
Names
Might
Perfect Ignorance Is Quiet, Perfect Knowledge Is Quiet; Not So The Transition From The Former To The Latter.
Ignorance
Perfect
Transition
Song Is The Heroics Of Speech.
Song
Speech
Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth To Do, Do That With All Thy Might And Leave The Issues Calmly To God.
Hands
Issues
Might
Isolation Is The Sum Total Of Wretchedness To A Man.
Lonely
Loneliness
Men
Speech Is Human, Silence Is Divine, Yet Also Brutish And Dead: Therefore We Must Learn Both Arts.
Art
Silence
Speech
Whose School-hours Are All The Days And Nights Of Our Existence.
Education
School
Night
Tobacco Smoke Is The One Element In Which, By Our European Manners, Men Can Sit Silent Together Without Embarrassment, And Where No Man Is Bound To Speak One Word More Than He Has Actually And Veritably Got To Say. Nay, Rather Every Man Is Admonished And Enjoined By The Laws Of Honor, And Even Of Personal Ease, To Stop Short Of That Point; And At All Events To Hold His Peace And Take To His Pipe Again The Instant He Has Spoken His Meaning, If He Chance To Have Any.
Men
Law
Smoking
Pin Your Faith To No Ones Sleeves, Haven't You Two Eyes Of Your Own.
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Two
Independence
When Pococke Inquired Of Grotius, Where The Proof Was Of That Story Of The Pigeon, Trained To Pick Peas From Mahomet's (muhammad's) Ear, And Pass For An Angel Dictating To Him? Grotius Answered That There Was No Proof!
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Angel
Stories
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Mean
Being True
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Writing
Character
No Pressure, No Diamonds.
Uplifting
Good Life
Failure
The Persians Are Called The French Of The East; We Will Call The Arabs Oriental Italians. A Gifted Noble People; A People Of Wildstrong Feelings, And Of Iron Restraint Over These: The Characteristic Of Noblemindedness, Of Genius.
Iron
People
Feelings
There Is No Permanent Place In This Universe For Evil... Evil May Hide Behind This Fallacy And That, But It Will Be Hunted From Fallacy To Fallacy Until There Is No More Fallacy For It To Hide Behind.
Evil
May
Fallacy
The Old Cathedrals Are Good, But The Great Blue Dome That Hangs Over Everything Is Better.
Funny
Humor
Blue
They Wrong Man Greatly Who Say He Is To Be Seduced By Ease. Difficulty, Abnegation, Martyrdom, Death Are The Allurements That Act On The Heart Of Man.
Heart
Men
Ease
To Us Also, Through Every Star, Through Every Blade Of Grass, Is Not God Made Visible If We Will Open Our Minds And Our Eyes.
God
Stars
Eye
Such Is The World. Understand It, Despise It, Love It; Cheerfully Hold On Thy Way Through It, With Thy Eye On Highest Loadstars!
Eye
World
Way
A Thought Once Awakened Does Not Again Slumber.
Doe
Slumber
Awakened
To Know, To Get Into The Truth Of Anything, Is Ever A Mystic Art, Of Which The Best Logic's Can But Babble On The Surface.
Art
Spirituality
Logic
That A Parliament, Especially A Parliament With Newspaper Reporters Firmly Established In It, Is An Entity Which By Its Very Nature Cannot Do Work, But Can Do Talk Only.
Nature
Entity
Newspapers
Woe To Him That Claims Obedience When It Is Not Due; Woe To Him That Refuses It When It Is.
Woe
Obedience
Claims
A Lie Should Be Trampled On And Extinguished Wherever Found. I Am For Fumigating The Atmosphere When I Suspect That Falsehood, Like Pestilence, Breathes Around Me.
Lying
Atmosphere
Pestilence
No Man Sees Far, Most See No Farther Than Their Noses.
Men
Vision
Noses
We Call That Fire Of The Black Thunder-cloud "electricity," And Lecture Learnedly About It, And Grind The Like Of It Out Of Glass And Silk: But What Is It? What Made It? Whence Comes It? Whither Goes It?
Science
Fire
Clouds
Insurrection, Never So Necessary, Is A Most Sad Necessity; And Governors Who Wait For That To Instruct Them Are Surely Getting Into The Fatalest Course.
Waiting
Revolution
Courses
Taste, If It Mean Anything But A Paltry Connoisseurship, Must Mean A General Susceptibility To Truth And Nobleness, A Sense To Discern, And A Heart To Love And Reverence All Beauty, Order, Goodness, Wheresoever, Or In Whatsoever Forms And Accompaniments They Are To Be Seen. This Surely Implies, As Its Chief Condition, Not Any Given External Rank Or Situation, But A Finely-gifted Mind, Purified Into Harmony With Itself, Into Keenness And Justness Of Vision; Above All, Kindled Into Love And Generous Admiration.
Mean
Heart
Order
The Genuine Essence Of Truth Never Dies.
Truth
Essence
Genuine
History Shows That The Majority Of People That Have Done Anything Great Have Passed Their Youth In Seclusion.
Being Alone
Creativity
People
Men's Hearts Ought Not To Be Set Against One Another, But Set With One Another And All Against Evil Only.
Heart
Men
Evil
This London City, With All Of Its Houses, Palaces, Steam-engines, Cathedrals, And Huge Immeasurable Traffic An Tumult, What Is It But A Thought, But Millions Of Thoughts Made Into One-a Huge Immeasurable Spirit Of A Thought, Embodied In Brick, In Iron, Smoke, Dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, And The Rest Of It! Not A Brick Was Made But Some Man Had To Think Of The Making Of That Brick.
Men
Thinking
Iron
Teaching School Is But Another Word For Sure And Not Very Slow Destruction.
Teaching
School
Math
Dinners Are Defined As 'the Ultimate Act Of Communion;' Men That Can Have Communion In Nothing Else, Can Sympathetically Eat Together, Can Still Rise Into Some Glow Of Brotherhood Over Food And Wine.
Wine
Men
Brotherhood
Courtesy Is The Due Of Man To Man; Not Of Suit-of-clothes To Suit-of-clothes.
Men
Clothes
Suits
The Mathematics Of High Achievement
Achievement
Mathematics
In Every Man's Writings, The Character Of The Writer Must Lie Recorded.
Lying
Writing
Character
This World, After All Our Science And Sciences, Is Still A Miracle; Wonderful, Inscrutable, Magical And More, To Whosoever Will Think Of It.
Science
Thinking
Magic In The World
A Very Sea Of Thought; Neither Calm Nor Clear, If You Will, Yet Wherein The Toughest Pearl-diver May Dive To His Utmost Depth, And Return Not Only With Sea-wreck But With True Orients.
Sea
Depth
Wrecks
Why Did Not Somebody Teach Me The Constellations, And Make Me At Home In The Starry Heavens, Which Are Always Overhead, And Which I Don't Half Know To This Day?
Home
Science
Heaven
The Work An Unknown Good Man Has Done Is Like A Vein Of Water Flowing Hidden Underground, Secretly Making The Ground Green.
Business
Men
Water
We Have Chosen Mahomet Not As The Most Eminent Prophet; But As The One We Are Freest To Speak Of. He Is By No Means The Truest Of Prophets; But I Do Esteem Him A True One.
Mean
Speak
Prophet
Thought, True Labor Of Any Kind, Highest Virtue Itself, Is It Not The Daughter Of Pain?
Daughter
Pain
Creative
No Violent Extreme Endures.
Violence
Violent
Endure
Old Age Is Not A Matter For Sorrow. It Is Matter For Thanks If We Have Left Our Work Done Behind Us.
Birthday
Time
Sorrow
Nay, In Every Epoch Of The World, The Great Event, Parent Of All Others, Is It Not The Arrival Of A Thinker In The World?
Parent
Events
World
That There Should One Man Die Ignorant Who Had Capacity For Knowledge, This I Call A Tragedy.
Ignorance
Knowledge
Men
There Is Precious Instruction To Be Got By Finding We Were Wrong.
Instruction
Findings
A Man Willing To Work, And Unable To Find Work, Is Perhaps The Saddest Sight That Fortune's Inequality Exhibits Under This Sun.
Work
Men
Sight
Under All Speech That Is Good For Anything There Lies A Silence That Is Better, Silence Is Deep As Eternity; Speech Is Shallow As Time.
Time
Lying
Silence
The Lightning Spark Of Thought Generated In The Solitary Mind Awakens Its Likeness In Another Mind.
Innovation
Mind
Lightning
Experience Is The Best Of School Masters, Only The School Fees Are Heavy.
School
Experience
Masters
Pain Was Not Given Thee Merely To Be Miserable Under; Learn From It, Turn It To Account.
Pain
Miserable
Given
With Stupidity And Sound Digestion, Man May Front Much.
Men
Stupidity
Sound
Trending Author
P. C. Cast
Martha Beck
Lord Chesterfield
Walker Evans
Kyra Sedgwick
George Farquhar
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