Samuel Johnson

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

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

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing –to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

Honor bespeaks worth. Confidence begets trust. Service brings satisfaction. Cooperation proves the quality of leadership.

By indignities men come to dignities.

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.