The true university of these days is a collection of books.
— Thomas Carlyle
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
History, a distillation of rumour.
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
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.
A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
Endurance is patience concentrated.
Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.
Work alone is noble.
If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
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.
When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.
Thought is the parent of the deed.
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.
If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
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 cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.
Worship is transcendent wonder.
Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.
History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
Wonder is the basis of worship.
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.
The spiritual is the parent of the practical.
Silence is more eloquent than words.
For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.
Happy the people whose annals are vacant.
Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther.
It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.
Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
All great peoples are conservative.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.
If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.
No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.
