Samuel Johnson

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

We love and lose in China, we weep on England’s moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we’re the same.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

Nothing does more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

It were better to be of no church, than to be bitter for any.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

Short words are the best and old words when short are best of all.