Samuel Johnson

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

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

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good morning at total strangers.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities – a willing movement of a man’s soul with the larger sweep of the world’s forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.