If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.

Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.