Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. – 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
Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness. – Thomas Carlyle
There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune. – Thomas Carlyle
A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf… For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. – Thomas Babington Macaulay