Samuel Johnson

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

Friendship . . . is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

The rain comes and what bends will rise. It is a purposeful journey.

Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.