Samuel Johnson

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

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

I desire to gain your Love and Friendship by a kind, Just and Peaceful Life.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.