Samuel Johnson

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

I would live to study, and not study to live.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon

There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.