Samuel Johnson

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

If it matters, it will hurt like knives or wrap and lift you in the most immeasurable joy. Or both. One thing is certain, you will feel intensely alive.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

To delay justice, is injustice.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

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.