Samuel Johnson

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

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.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

Pain never really goes away; you just elevate and get used to it by growing stronger.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

When you’re first figuring yourself out, you care so much about what people think of you.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any effect other than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.