The graceful minuet-dance of fancy must give place to the toilsome, thorny pilgrimage of understanding. On the transition from the age of romance to that of science.

In a certain sense all men are historians.

This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that.

And man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell.

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

Force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?" [As used in his time, by the word force, Carlyle means energy.]