Samuel Johnson

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

A private Life is to be preferred; the Honor and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I’ve done it a thousand times.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.