Samuel Johnson

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

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

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

Always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.