Samuel Johnson

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Everyone has the right to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

The fatal trait of the times is the divorce between religion and morality.