Samuel Johnson

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

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.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.

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

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.