Samuel Johnson

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow. [Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.Lat.]

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Children are all foreigners.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.