328 quotes
The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing."
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.
The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
When the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)
No good Book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.
Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded.
The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?
There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?
The French Revolution. A History (1837)
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.
Journal (1835)
Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself.
Sartor Resartus (1833)
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
Sir Walter Scott (1838)
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Signs of the Times (1829)
To this man life is already as earnest and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death.
Past and Present (1843)
Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind.
With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering.
Signs of the Times (1829)