Samuel Johnson

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.