Samuel Johnson

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Security will produce danger.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.