Samuel Johnson

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

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

Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.

Be not simply good – be good for something.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves: and perhaps that is the reason of it.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

He is armed without who is innocent within, be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.