Samuel Johnson

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

And all the while I thought I was drowning, I was actually the one holding my head under the water.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness , we don’t really know what love is.

There is always a best way of doing everything.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.