Samuel Johnson

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.