It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.

Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, himself, his hungering neighbor and me.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.