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.

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.

There is nothing so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman in marriage.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

Let us then try what love can do to mend a broken world.

They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

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.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.