Samuel Johnson

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Have good trust in yourself … not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

Well, dinner would have been splendid!

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.