Samuel Johnson

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

Human ‘beans’ is the only animals that is killing their own kind.

Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men’s heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

My love for you was like a poem I wrote; one that I disregarded as average. Torn out, thrown away to the rubbish heap, waiting; wishing to be picked up and appreciated by someone else, for the masterpiece that it is.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.