Samuel Johnson

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Understanding is a two-way street.

If we want maturity, we have to be mature. If we want a nation that feels hopeful, then we have to speak in hopeful terms… We have to model what we want.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.