Samuel Johnson

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

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

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

I was the same old me. Just like the Moon yesterday. But because of all the other factors that came to play, the darkness, the brightness, the blood red color. They all were a reflection, a projection due to the perfect set of circumstances. The Moon was still the Moon. But it was still labeled the Super Blue Blood Moon, Just so we can have some understanding, but, again I’ll state, the Moon was still just the Moon, just like I was still just me. Whatever you project on me, and I reflect back, doesn’t then make me become a new person, it’s just a reflection of your projection. I am still just me.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.