Samuel Johnson

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

As the Spanish proverb says, He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Love is only one of many passions.

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

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

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.