Samuel Johnson

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

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

Among the calamities of war, may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

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

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions…

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.