Thomas Carlyle

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.

The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.

Today

So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.

Out of Eternity
This new Day is born;
Into Eternity,
At night, will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did:
So soon it forever
From all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels

Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Love is ever the beginning of knowledge as fire is of light.

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.