Thomas Carlyle

Of all paths a man could strike into there is at any given moment a best path which here and now it were of all things wisest for him to do. To find this path and walk in it is the one thing needful for him.

Today is not yesterday how can our works and thoughts if they are always to be the fittest continue always the same? Change indeed is painful yet ever needful.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully.

The three great elements of modern civilization Gunpowder Printing and the Protestant Religion.

Debt is a bottomless sea.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.

Biography is the only true history.

If you can walk you can dance. Zimbabwe saying Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a steppingstone in the path of the strong.

There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

There are impertinent inquiries made; your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on the matter; not, if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was!

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.

Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.