Thomas Carlyle

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

Thirty millions, mostly fools.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.

Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.

Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get.

Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.

Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.

The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the godlike.

No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.

Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.

Skepticism . . . is not intellectual only it is moral also, a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul.

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.

Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

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

There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

The true past departs not, no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.