Samuel Johnson

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.