Samuel Johnson

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

The more you know the less you understand.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.