76
Self-love is mainly to blame, making people fond of being first and aspiring in all matters, and insatiably desirous to engage in everything.
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Attribution
77
All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for
78
The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or the place.
79
Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.
80
One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful.
81
We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.
82
We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.
83
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality
84
Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.
85
It never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues.
86
Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.
87
The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of success.
88
The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.
89
Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work.
90
Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in life.
91
Genius is 1 per cent. inspiration and 99 per cent. perspiration.
92
The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of “genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)
Attribution contested
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains is one of the most quoted sentences in English and Carlyle did not write it. This is what he wrote, and the differences are real: transcendent, not infinite; trouble, not pains; and first of all, which concedes that taking trouble is only where genius starts. The familiar wording appears later in the century in other hands and is usually traced to Jane Ellice Hopkins in 1870. Carlyle got the credit because he got there first with the thought.
93
Life seems terribly foreshortened as they look back and the mountain they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges when, by failing breath, they reach the top.
94
I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
95
Why may I not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this wide waking?
96
Struggle, work, fight as I would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing.
97
The Day of Miracles was past, and a long, gray road of dogged work lay ahead.
98
Rest and recreation are also necessary to his physical life.
99
If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
100
When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment.
William Hazlittverified·On Living to One's-Self, in Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners·January 1821