Samuel Johnson

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Business is the salt of life.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

It is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober — minded men.

Shut your mouth, close your lips, and say something!

There is properly no history; only biography.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.