Samuel Johnson

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

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

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

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

When you know better you do better.