Samuel Johnson

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

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.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

Thus, by every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.