Samuel Johnson

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

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

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.