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Book Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

27 Book quotes by Thomas Carlyle

All Book quotes Thomas Carlyle’s page

Carlyle’s reflections on the written page arrive with a Victorian gravitas that still feels relevant. Across 27 brief statements you’ll sense his belief in books as engines of moral and intellectual fire, a concise resource for anyone seeking his historic voice on reading.

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Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

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A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

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“Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book.”

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A collection of books is the best of all universities.

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My books are friends that never fail me.

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In books lies the soul fo the whole past time.

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A noble book! all men's book!

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

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I call that [Book of Job], apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen.

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Happy the people whose annals are blank in the history books!

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May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.

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After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books.

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The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

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No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first.

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Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.

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In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light,…

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In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material…

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If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount…

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No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No the most common quality of in…

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Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the…

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Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and…

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A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and…

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The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.

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O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted…

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All that a university or final highest school. can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us…

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I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.

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O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted…

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More by Thomas Carlyle

O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create,…

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Whose school-hours are all the days and nights of our existence.

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No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

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Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of…

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The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.

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Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices…

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The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession;…

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All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them.

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Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest…

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What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?

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Let Time and Chance combine, combine! Let Time and Chance combine! The fairest love from heaven above, That love of yours was mine, My…

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Thought will not work except in silence.

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