328 quotes
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Notebooks (1830)
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.
Past and Present (1843)
For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.
Past and Present (1843)
For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be "happy"?
The French Revolution. A History (1837)
It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.
Letter to His Wife (1835)
A man protesting against error is on the way to uniting himself with all men who believe in truth.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish.
His religion at best is an anxious wish, — like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
"Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).