Samuel Johnson

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.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

Nothing is real.

I constantly ask myself if what I’m doing is for me or somebody else. It’s tripping me out!

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.