Samuel Johnson

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

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

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

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.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.