Samuel Johnson

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

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

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

The less government we have the better.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Beauty rests on necessities.