Samuel Johnson

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone… I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back here. I think I’m done.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.