Samuel Johnson

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.

How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

Remember who you are.