"Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement."
"It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature."
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Source: Thomas Carlyle, Clyde de L. Ryals, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Kenneth J. Fielding, Ian Campbell (1997). “The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle: 1850”, Duke University Press Books
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"The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it."
"Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has ''cast up'' in my time or is like to -- this art by which even the ''poor'' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?"
"In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me."
"On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best."
"Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity."