Samuel Johnson

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show…let me do it now.- William Penn

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.