Samuel Johnson

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

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.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.

Let your character be kept up the very end, just as it began, and so be consistent.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Be passionate about something and lean to that strength.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.