Thomas Carlyle

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

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

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

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

All great peoples are conservative.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.