Samuel Johnson

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. On Other Peoples Expectations: The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it’s too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.