Samuel Johnson

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

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

Friendship, ‘the wine of life,’ said Boswell, should, like a well-stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed. And Dr. Johnson added to this A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s wall is ablaze.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Practice makes perfect, and nobody’s perfect, so why practice?

It always seems impossible until its done.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.