All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! – Thomas Carlyle
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion. – Thomas Carlyle
The first purpose of clothes… was not warmth or decency, but ornament…. Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. – Thomas Carlyle
It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. – Thomas Carlyle