Samuel Johnson

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

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

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

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.

If we don’t occupy ourself with everything, then peaceful mind will have nowhere to abide.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

Courage is exhilarating.