Samuel Johnson

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.

How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.