Samuel Johnson

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

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

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.