Thomas Carlyle

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

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

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.

Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.