Samuel Johnson

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

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.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

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.

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.

Genius Borrows nobly.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.