Samuel Johnson

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

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

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

I don’t like needing anyone for anything.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

When you know better, you do better.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

There are no have-to’s, just choices.

Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.