Samuel Johnson

What is easy is seldom excellent.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

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.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

You are braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete.

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.

Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness , we don’t really know what love is.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.

It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.