Samuel Johnson

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

Travel is a fools paradise.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Remember who you are.

If you want the time to pass quickly, just give your note for 90 days.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Don’t be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don’t bewail and moan. Omit the negative propositions. Challenge us with incessant affirmatives. Don’t waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.