Samuel Johnson

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

Remember where you came from.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

The rain comes and what bends will rise. It is a purposeful journey.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

The less government we have the better.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.