Samuel Johnson

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

The eye is easily frightened.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

We must train hard. It’s not about denying a weakness may exist but about denying its right to persist.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.