Samuel Johnson

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Ready are you? What know you of ready?

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.