Samuel Johnson

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

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

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

The money men make lives after them.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

I constantly ask myself if what I’m doing is for me or somebody else. It’s tripping me out!

Syllables govern the world.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.