Thomas Carlyle Quotes on Books (14 Quotes)

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.

As one highway engineer put it, We were going by the book, but the damned mountain couldn't read. ... Every noble work is at first impossible.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

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

If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that.

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

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

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

It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that, as through life and to death he firmly did.

Happy the people whose annals are blank in the history books.

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

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

The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.

I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.