Samuel Johnson

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

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

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

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.

When the romance is gone, if it’s always you left searching for it, maybe it’s time to stop looking, and start searching for someone new, and start a new romantic journey.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

He is great who confers the most benefits.