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Books Quotes by Thomas Carlyle

41 Books quotes by Thomas Carlyle

All Books quotes Thomas Carlyle’s page

Thomas Carlyle calls books friends that never fail and says a collection of them is the best university. He writes that books hold the soul of past times and can reveal hidden truths about nature. He also urges people to follow their true appetite when choosing what to read.

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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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Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books.

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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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Literature is the thought of thinking souls.

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In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

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My books are friends that never fail me.

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“Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an ‘apocalypse of Nature,’ a revealing of the ‘open secret.”

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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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“All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”

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We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

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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 true university of these days is a collection of books.

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

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Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought…

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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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“All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are…

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There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not…

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What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all…

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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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Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our…

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Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading;…

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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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“The greatest university is a collection of books.”

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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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“My books are friends that never fail me." ( Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle ; 17 March 1817)”

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

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“The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”

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All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

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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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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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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,…

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

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

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

The sincere alone can recognize sincerity.

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

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

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

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

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?

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

Thought will not work except in silence.

The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble.

Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?

The press is the fourth estate of the realm.