Thomas Carlyle

The Philo­sophy of Clothes is now to all read­ers, as we pre­dicted it would do, un­fold­ing it­self into new bound­less ex­pan­sions, of a cloud­clapt, al­most chi­mer­ical as­pect, yet not without azure loom­ings in the far dis­tance, and streaks as of an Elysian bright­ness; the highly ques­tion­able pur­port and prom­ise of which it is be­com­ing more and more im­port­ant for us to as­cer­tain.

Lan­guage is called the Gar­ment of Thought: how­ever, it should rather be, Lan­guage is the Flesh-Gar­ment, the Body, of thought.

I said that Ima­gin­a­tion wove this Flesh-Gar­ment; and does not she? Meta­phors are her stuff: ex­am­ine Lan­guage; what, if you ex­cept some few prim­it­ive ele­ments (of nat­ural sound), what is it all but Meta­phors, re­cog­nised as such, or no longer re­cog­nised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and col­our­less?

What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work there­with?