The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love. – Thomas Carlyle
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. – Thomas Carlyle
For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer. – 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
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. Nay, and when I walk alone in a beautiful Orchard, if my Thoughts are some part of the Time taken up with strange Occurrences, I some part of the Time call them back again to my Walk, or to the Orchard, to the Sweetness of the Solitude, and to my self. – Michel de Montaigne, “Of Experience,” translated from French by Charles Cotton