“We want reality, stability, composure of soul—above all it seems to me, we all of us want a sound sleep!” -JWC to Frances Wedgewood, 1838

“Consider yourself as a pioneer sent out before the rest; to make the way smoother for the rest.” -TC to Alexander Carlyle, 1843 #PavingTheWay

“All last night it thundered; and there was one such clap as I never heard in my life! preceded by a flash that covered my book for a moment with blue light, completely eclipsing the candle light.” -JWC to TC, 1858

“Ask yourself with all rigour, What an ordinary reader will require to be aware of in order to understand what this Author says?” -TC to David Lang, 1848

‘My employments, my outlooks, condition and history here, were a long chapter; on which I could like so well to talk with you face to face; but as for writing of them, it is a mere mockery.” -TC to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838 #OnThisDay

“The House is beautifully situated in a solitary place overhanging the boundless bright blue Sea, a short furlong from the old Village of Seaton.” -TC to John A. Carlyle, 1865

“I am, and shall likely be for a while, extremely busy; never busier.” -TC to JAmes Carlyle, 1844 #OnThisDay #ThatTimeOfYear

“The best thing for me would be to get away—and away to you, rather than anywhere else! I know that well enough in both my heart and my head! But—one cannot do just what one likes best, and even what is best for one!” -JWC to Mary Russell, 1865

“‘The sky was so blue!” and “the sea was so green! and I was not sick,” and it was a good joy!” -JWC to TC, 1858 #FridayEveMood

“I wish I were beside you!... I think I shall go out of my senses if this sort of thing lasts much longer!” -JWC to Mary Russell, 1862

“But patience yet a little while, and all will be well with me when we are once fairly married.” -JBW to Thomas Carlyle, 1826

“This evening I am too tired “for anything”—and no shame to me” -JWC to TC, 1845 #SleepyTuesdays

“For I regard it withal as the real School of Working Men,4 whh, more than anything else, will separate the good, rational & honourable workmen, from the bad, wasteful, mutinous and irrational.” -TC to Thomas Dixon, 1865 #OnThisDay

“My plot has been thickening till it has seemed really as tho it would come to ‘a regular fix’” -JWC to Helen Welsh, 1845

“Tell Miss Jess I do not write to herself, because the words lie frozen in me in presence of her great sorrow and dreariness.” -JWC to Eliza Donaldson, 1860

“Why do you not write to me? Is it purpose? Is it necessity? Negligence it cannot be.” -TC to Jane Baillie Welsh, 1826

“Dear Forster you see what a pen I have: good pens, tolerable writing apparatus, have left the world!” -TC to John Forster, 1855 #AllGoodPensMustComeToAnEnd

“There are two Books of yours here; which I beg you to understand are not meant to be kept as black-mail, but to be returned with thanks.” -TC to John Gibson Lockhart, 1839 #OnThisDay

“Oh my Dear! I could tell you something that would make you die of laughing, if I hadn’t to dilute it in ink! And I was solemnly charged to “not tell Mr Carlyle”!” -TC to JWC, 1865

“God willing I shall make it out before very long—but at this season—and until I have got up my strength again—home with “liberty to be as ugly and stupid and disagreeable as I please” is the only rational place for me.” -JWC to Jeannie Welsh, 1844 #HomeSweetHome