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Thomas Carlyle Quotes: 12

  • He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

  • Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

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

  • A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

  • What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

  • If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

  • All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

  • True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

  • My books are friends that never fail me."(Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle; 17 March 1817)

  • If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

    Essays on Goethe
  • There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!

    On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History
  • (Quoted by Thomas Carlyle) The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect.