Samuel Johnson

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

It’s a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.

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

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.