Samuel Johnson

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

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.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

You. too, can determine what you want. You can decide on your major objectives, targets, aims, and destination.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

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

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.