Samuel Johnson

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.

Your fingers caress my heart strings, shaping a silent sonnet in notes of love. Transcending space and time, bathing the ether in perfect harmony.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

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

Pain never really goes away; you just elevate and get used to it by growing stronger.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.