Samuel Johnson

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

Friendship, ‘the wine of life,’ said Boswell, should, like a well-stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed. And Dr. Johnson added to this A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.