Samuel Johnson

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

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

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Ready are you? What know you of ready?