Samuel Johnson

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Thought makes every thing fit for use.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

Events tend to recur in cycles.

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.