Samuel Johnson

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

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

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

Strivers achieve what dreamers believe.

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.