Samuel Johnson

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;