328 quotes
Speak not at all, in any wise, till you have somewhat to speak; care not for the reward of your speaking, but simply and with undivided mind for the truth of your speaking.
The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Blessed is the man who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. Know thy work, and do it; and work at it like Hercules. One monster there is in the world, the idle man.
As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden— "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden"; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love ; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
And yet without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable.
I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.
Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Genius is 'the inspired gift of God.' It is the clearer presence of God Most High in a man. Dim, potential in all men; in this man it has become clear, actual.
Past and Present (1843)
In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.
Past and Present (1843)
The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.
Sir Walter Scott (1838)
No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer, No effects.
The French Revolution. A History (1837)
Wonder, indeed, is, on all hands, dying out: it is the sign of uncultivation to wonder.
Signs of the Times (1829)
Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)
The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)
Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)
All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.
Sir Walter Scott (1838)
Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature; his earliest expression of what can be called Thought.
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Heroes and Hero Worship (1840)