Samuel Johnson

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Virtue is too often merely local.

We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

A sudden bold and unexpected question does many times surprise a man and lay him open.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Strange – is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.

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.