Samuel Johnson

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

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

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

To be like Christ is to be a Christian.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

God has no religion.

Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.

I think every person should have some faith inside him, in his heart. What matters is not an external display of this faith, but the inner state of the soul.

Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others is the ultimate source of success in life.

A cult is a religion with no political power.

All beings are by nature Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man.

The Buddhist notion of diligence is to delight in positive deeds.

A follower of the way has neither form nor shape, neither root nor trunk; nor dwelling place; like a fish leaping in the water.