Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
Thomas Carlyle
Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Thomas Carlyle
The purpose of man is in action not thought.
Thomas Carlyle
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle
No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment.
Thomas Carlyle
Life is a little gleam of time between two eternity s.
Thomas Carlyle
Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle
It is not a lucky word, this name ''impossible''; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
Thomas Carlyle
Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
Thomas Carlyle
If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.
Thomas Carlyle
One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.
Thomas Carlyle
A fair day's wages for a fair day's work.
Thomas Carlyle
The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
Thomas Carlyle
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Thomas Carlyle
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.