Samuel Johnson

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.

For so many people, TV and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them. It becomes important for the world to see different images of each other, so that we can develop empathy and understanding.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

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

But the mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

Are you using your pain as an excuse or as a source of strength?

You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

It’s not the adversity, but how you face it.

A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

An honest man is always a child.

Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions.What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.