Samuel Johnson

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

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

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.