Samuel Johnson

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his work and in that work he does what he wants to do.

Every artist was first an amateur.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.