Samuel Johnson

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Beauty without expression is boring.

Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.