Samuel Johnson

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

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

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success – or are they holding you back?

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.